I have just added a new section to my website. You’ll find the link at the very top of this page in the tabs, and on the side, called Backstage.

I wanted to create a place where I could thank my friends – that is the small handful of people who really truly love my work, people who have gone out of their way for me, or have asked for signed copies of my books.

For example, I’ve designed a workshop, called The Art of Daily Living, as both an online and a live workshop, designed as a companion to my book, The Nature of Trees, and I’ll be putting up all sorts of content from that workshop backstage for free before anyone else gets a chance to see it. As well, I’ve been writing poetry, drawing sketches and all those sorts of things I normally do, and will be putting that backstage as well. And I might even throw up a few pages from the novel I’m currently working on… maybe… we’ll have to see about that.

So, please, take a peek Backstage. It’s pretty easy to get access and you’ll be getting all sorts of free stuff down the road.

Here is a sample of what awaits backstage

This is the first part of a workshop I’ve been working on for the past several weeks. It’s designed to be a companion to The Nature of Trees, called The Art of Daily Living. The plan is to be doing this workshop live, in person, with a powerpoint slide show going on behind me. The workbook is 99 percent finished and is 107 pages, with 23 sections. This is Part 1 of 23. You can right click and download the link, or play it through your browser (it will open in a new window) and it is about ten minutes long: Part 1: Who Are You?

Hope to see you inside!

Related posts:

1. Thoreau’s Minimal Living

There are some books I try to put off reading. Good books. Books, I know are going to do more than entertain me, that are going to push me, inspire me towards doing more. Any good book should inspire its readers, but there are some – just by looking at the cover – you know are going to do more than most.
For me, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, was one of those books, and I finally had the chance to read it through this weekend.
I’ve been a fan of The Grateful Dead for quite a few years and was fortunate enough to see them in concert a few times when they came to Michigan in the Nineties.
While there are a lot of great ideas in the book, coming from the band, or cases of people or companies doing things in a particularly Dead-like manner, most of the ideas are things we already see quite a lot of today, especially for those of us with an eye on social media.
Here are five notes I took away with the book. As with most of the notes I take, they are partly from the book and partly from my own reflections while reading the book.

1. Give freely. The Dead would let fans record their concerts for free. This never hurt their record sales. In fact, it helped sales. Official recordings were always of a better quality than what the fans could achieve.
2. Be yourself. One fascinating idea is to look at websites by others who do what you do, examine what your website has in common with them, and then remove those commonalities. Be uniquely yourself.
3. Be your best. Practice. Get Better. Practice some more.
4. Experiment and don’t worry about screwing up. On stage the Grateful Dead were 80 percent improvisation. They screwed up sometimes, but for anyone at a concert, that was not a problem. Every mistake just made them more endearing.
5. Place your fans on centre stage. One of the best parts of a Grateful Dead concert was the audience. The party always started well ahead of the band, in the parking lot. The band always maintained that the audience was just as important in the concert experience as the band was. Where would any performer, any writer, any artist be without their fans?

“Making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live music is like being
in a rowboat in the ocean.” ~ Jerry Garcia

Related posts:

1. Grateful Self-Promotion
2. Video Marketing for Writers

There is a story that Walt Whitman, after self-publishing his first edition of Leaves of Grass, could not find a kind word about his work anywhere. The truth was nobody liked it much. Then, one day he received a letter of encouragement from Ralph Waldo Emerson, including the sentence: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”

The next edition of Leaves of Grass contained that sentence on the spine of the book, with Emerson’s name. Whitman also had the letter printed in a newspaper, which he then cut out and pasted inside copies of his books.

Emerson, the story goes, was not very pleased. The rest of us, however, should be. Because without this act of shameless self-promotion, there is a good chance none of us would have ever heard Whitman’s name, and the face of literature would vastly different than it is today.

The Power of We

Myself, I’m pretty good at promotion. If I really believe in something I’m pretty good at transferring my enthusiasm to others. During my career in sales and marketing these were always other people’s products and services. Rejection never bothered me. The catch in all of this, for me, however, was that I always used the word “we“: We have a great product. We have a great service. We are great at what we do.

There was a lot of power in that word for me. Whenever I used it, I would be reminding myself that it was not just for my sake that I was out there selling and promoting and marketing. I was doing it to let others shine, to keep others employed, to give them the opportunity to keep getting better at what they do, and to thrive in their careers. I was introducing clients to them, initiating relationships, planting the seeds of new friendships.

So with all of that behind me, the sales person’s fear of rejection never bothered me much. I could accept the word “No!” and move on.

As a writer its a bit more difficult to do that. The word “we” just doesn’t work as well when standing behind a book I’ve written. Sure,  I think about my publisher, my editor, my agent, the printers, my children, the phone company and the landlord. I think about them daily, but that doesn’t transfer as easily into a “we” because their names are not on the book. It’s my name alone on the cover.

Working against that, as well, are the words of  a couple people who should have known me better, who have used words like ego-centric and self-centred in describing me. There are only two people who have ever said such things, but their words have weighed heavily on me for several years now. And while I could suggest to myself that these words were used for reasons that have little to do with me, and much more to do with them, that does not do much to alleviate the weight of those echoing words.

The truth is, in my heart, I’ve always been quite shy. It took years of practice, beginning with a Dale Carnegie course twenty years ago, to get over that shyness. More than that – and I’m told this comes across quite quickly when talking to people – my sense of humility might be even more exaggerated than my words reveal.

So when I was at the CBC the other day, it was very difficult for me to ask Susan Toccalino to take a picture of me in the studio for the recording. With the exception of my solo trip to Paris, I have never in my life asked anyone to take a picture of me, let alone for the sake of putting it online. Then something happened and I was able to take a breath and shamelessly ask her for that small favour. (Thank you again Susan.)

Because I remembered something:

There would be people online, when I got home, who would want to see that picture. There are people who read almost every word I write and would like to see more. There are people who have sent me letters and emails, or have taken the time to stop me on the street to tell me so. There are even a couple of you who have called me at midnight, drunk I suspect, to express to me how much something I’ve composed has meant to them. There was even a man who chased me down the street in his housecoat and slippers in the February snow to tell me what I’m doing is important.

So in the future, I want you to know that it is for those among you that love or even just like my work, and for those whom I have yet to meet, that I will be promoting the hell out of this latest book. And hopefully, this will afford me the time to finish my next book, and the books after that. I am grateful for every single one of you.

Grateful Self-Promotion

So if my promotion seems to be too much, please take a moment if I am ever able to meet you in person, to look into my eyes for just a moment. Because I’m sure you will see the gratitude beneath my promotional efforts that will most certainly appear shameless on the surface.

“At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.” ~ Muhammad Ali

No related posts.

If you look up any articles on multitasking, you’ll find very few on the subject that are not designed to show you how to do it better, or why it is an important skill to master. But it is not an important skill. Any good effects of multitasking are, as Marcus Buckingham has pointed out, just a myth.

According to a study conducted in 2005 by Hewlett-Packard, distractions like emails and phone calls while working on other tasks will reduce your IQ, on average, by about 10 points. This is the same as missing a night’s sleep, and more than twice the loss you would get after smoking marijuana.

I’ve been experimenting on this, before reading about this study, and I was coming to a similar conclusion.

Effects of Multitasking on Reading

With a movie on in the background, which I had seen before, but generally find entertaining, I tried reading the first chapter of a novel. My computer was on. I didn’t reply to any emails, but scanned the three that I received. After a half hour, I had read only seven pages, and had difficulty recalling the names of the characters.

With the computer closed and the television off, I then read more than 20 pages in a half hour, in addition to the seven which I had half-read in the first half hour.

Effects of Multitasking on Conversation

While a friend was playing solitaire on her computer, I began a conversation on a topic I knew to be of great interest to her. (I still have not told her I was conducting an experiment.) I simply introduced the subject by telling her of an article I had read earlier in the day. She expressed interest in it, but the feedback she provided was quite predictable. A lot of nodding. She turned away from her game several times to ask me to repeat points of great interest to her, and that was about it.

Later, while walking through the park, she turned to me and said, “Could you tell me about that article again. I don’t think I was really paying attention.” We then had a twenty-minute engaging discussion on the subject.

Effects of Multitasking on Driving

Where I live in Canada, it is now illegal to text or use a hand-held cellphone while driving.
In the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has concluded that drivers using hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into car crashes causing bodily injury.

As well, the University of Utah has concluded that using a cell phone delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent.

Are you seeing a trend here? The effects of multitasking being compared to being drunk, being deprived of sleep, or being stoned. Does this really sound like something that should be considered as a desirable job skill? Is it really adding value to our lives?

For me, in the past three days since I’ve sworn off multitasking for one month, this is what I have found:

1. I’m getting more accomplished in less time.

2. I’m getting more enjoyment and learning more from each task.

3. Trivial and unnecessary tasks are being swept from my daily schedule.

4. My interactions with people are much more fulfilling.

For those who believe they are saving time, or being more productive by multitasking, I would suggest you try the reading experiment I described above. Time yourself, and see how many pages you get through, and how your retention fares.

Better yet, the next time someone on a cellphone cuts you off in traffic, follow them and ask them their opinion on the effects of multitasking. I bet they think they’re good multitaskers too!

Related posts:

1. The Sound of Silence
2. Finding Passion in Your Life

Yesterday’s post on The Sound of Silence, sparked a lot of thought on my part as it became a topic of conversation over afternoon drinks, and because of a great comment from Lori.

I’ve come to the conclusion that multi-tasking is really a sin, at least for me.

I have a friend, my former publisher, who has never multi-tasked in her life. She has such single mindedness that when you are talking to her, and the phone rings, she ignores it. Even if she suspects who is calling, and has some idea of how important it is, she still ignores it. In fact, I have never once witnessed her picking up the phone, looking at a television or computer screen.

When she is working on a project for a client, or talking with a friend, or playing the piano, or walking her dogs… whatever she is doing, she is doing that with everything she’s got – unfiltered, undistracted single mindedness in every endeavour.

The first time I ever saw the type of work she does for her clients, I was completely blown away. It was a simple 6-page brochure she put together using InDesign. Now I have seen a lot of brochures and eBooks, not to mention the thousands of graphics on websites and blogs I have seen. This was, by far, the most exceptional piece of work I have ever seen. It was simply brilliant. The title was not just catchy, it was profound. Her use of space, her selection of words, her choice of graphics, and the way she put these all together was – honestly! – a work of art.

While it certainly helps that she has a lot of talents, and is one of the most intelligent people I know, but when I asked her how she was able to accomplish such a beautiful piece of work, her reply was this: “I just keep working on it until its finished.”

How long did she spend working on this 6-page brochure with less than 800 words of content? Three days.

Three days without turning on the television.

Three days without answering phone calls.

Three days working on the same small project, thinking about it, contemplating it, revising it, and revising it over and over and over again, without stop except to eat, walk her dogs, and sleep.

On top of this, designing brochures is not even what she considers one of her core competencies. She has done very few of them. But regardless of what the project entails, she puts the same degree of single mindedness into her work. The result is that her clients are always, always blown away. Her fees are basically triple what anyone in her field would charge… and she still has to turn new clients away because her schedule is usually booked for one to two years in advance.

What alarms me about her single mindedness is only this – I used to be much like that. But over the past couple years I’ve slipped into an awful, sinful multitasking mentality.

Everyone multitasks. Everyone has multiple windows open on their computer, checks their email while they’re on the phone, and almost everyone picks up the phone when it rings, regardless of what they are doing. It is acceptable so, there is seldom a problem in doing it.

For me, its a habit I feel I need to get out of. So for the next thirty days, I have decided, I will absolutely refuse the temptation to multitask.

I honestly don’t see the value in it. Do you?

Related posts:

1. The Sound of Silence

When it comes to grammar, the one thing that really aggravates me is the self-appointed grammarian, the person without a teaching certificate or appropriate PhD who can’t resist correcting other people’s use of words. Language is fluid. It lives and breathes. It changes and evolves. Anyone going through life with a rule-book in their pocket is someone with whom I have little in common.

Second to that, is the adverb. I just don’t get them. I don’t understand their appeal. I don’t understand their purpose, except as a way to weed out weak-minded authors from publishers’ slush piles. When I was naive and inexperienced and found myself using them in my prose, you could be guaranteed that I was just searching for words. Typing out an adverb was a way of  buying time until my next thought could come along.

Basically, in my opinion, any book with more than one adverb per page should have every adverb cut out, and then stapled to the author’s fingers.

Little good can come from the use of adverbs. They are roadblocks to understanding. They are literary potholes, jarring the reader’s concentration. They are empty spaces where substance and meaning could otherwise be.

Except, of course, in advertising slogans.

A well placed adverb in an advertising can work wonders on the most experienced reader’s eyes, and befuddle the most tired of ears. Perhaps this is because advertising is not supposed to impart information. Slogans are designed only to be remembered – like the exaggerated laugh in the middle of a tired crowd.

Now the biggest peeve among self-appointed grammarians seems to be the continuing trend away from -ly adverbs. In normal conversation, in films, blogs, and in the dialogue of novels, the -ly is fast vanishing.

I have to admit that it’s irked me at times too. They look odd, and that seems to be the reason why they are used. For anyone with a love for language, they don’t just beg for attention – they stomp their feet, demanding it. This weekend, when I noticed National Geographic has dropped the -ly from their newest slogan, I have to wonder how much longer the -ly is going to survive.

Live curious, while certainly catchy, would seem to be missing two important letters at the end.

Of course Subway has also been doing it for years:

And Apple’s slogan, as seen here, and used extensively between 1997 and 2002, seems to be missing the same two important letters.

There are plenty of other examples. To see them, all you have to do is turn towards the nearest television.

I’ve asked several people what they think of this. Most people shrug. A few, however, roll their eyes or shake their heads, lamenting what they perceive as the end of civilization. However…

Attn: Amateur Grammarians

I hate to break this to you, but grammarians-in-the-know are quick to point out that an adverb does not necessarily need the -ly to be grammatically correct.

In fact, an adverb is actually defined as any word that modifies a verb, regardless of its dressing. Words like curious, fresh and different do not necessarily need to be wearing the hose and garters of the -ly to be adverbs. They simply need to describe a verb. An adjective used as an adverb is grammatically correct.

Ha.

The English language is supposed to evolve. New words are created, and old words are put away. They are changed and modified by either genius (Shakespeare) or repeated use by the masses.

Those who believe we should be wepyng and waylyng for the losian, laene adverb*, should revisit Chaucer… reminisce… and get on with their lives.

*Old English for weeping, wailing, poor, lost.

No related posts.

I was talking to the owner of a small company recently, when I used the term “Social Media” and saw the eyes roll skyward. She described it the same way most people would describe a game like Second Life (for those who know what it is). “Oh yeah,” she said, “That place where people without lives go to pretend that they have lives.”

Yes, she was bitter. And why not? It seems she had hired a consultant to build a presence for her on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, with the intention of increasing her business.  They went ahead and, after three months she found herself with a successful Twitter account, a mildly popular Facebook account, a bit of extra traffic to her website and… and well that was about it. Monthly sales from social media never exceeded $0.00. She terminated the relationship and went on her way.

Smart woman.

Now one of two things happened here: she hired the wrong person, or used the wrong strategy. But that’s okay. We should all do that – try something, see if it works and, if it doesn’t work, try something else.

What astounds me is how many people still think that social media is a place to sell things.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. But if you’re going to spend five thousand dollars per month paying someone with the goal of making sales through social media, you better have a good profit margin. On the same token, if you’re spending three hours of your own time each day trying to generate sales through social media… again, you better have a good profit margin.

Do the Math

If your purpose for being on Twitter and Facebook is to get people to buy something, and you’re investing three hours each day in that, that’s the same as working two weeks at a full time job. (3x7x4=84) But let’s say you only spend an hour or so each day on social media. That’s still a full week’s work each month.

If I was going to hire you for a week, and promised you the work was going to be a lot of fun, how much would you ask for? Would you settle for fifty cents an hour?

Go Work at Starbucks

If you’re not making $10/hour in profit, you would be better off working at Starbucks. For several reasons.

1. You’ll be making more money than you do now.

2. You’ll meet people, and get to know them. You’ll make friends.

3. Your new friends will soon discover, through natural conversation, that you’re also a writer, or a photographer, or that you build macrame bird houses, or sell used cars, or whatever it is you do. Some of them will express interest and ask where they can buy one.

4. You’ll learn about the business of Starbucks. You’ll learn what’s behind their branding that keeps people coming back to pay exorbitant prices for coffee. You’ll learn what makes people smile, and what doesn’t.

5. Finally, you’ll learn something about marketing and being social at the same time. You might come to understand why Starbucks has never sent you a message asking you if you’d like to buy a coffee.

Related posts:

1. Re-Tooling Your Social Media Career
2. Outside of the Matrix – Social Networking 1.0

With every new release of a new product, new feature, new price point, and even with the release of some new books, questions over the future of publishing surge like feeding time at the piranha tank.

The newest Kindle is released… the iPad is announced… the iPad is released… the Kindle is reduced in price…  Stieg Larsson sells a million copies on the Kindle… Kindle sales exceed hardcover sales…  best-selling author/blogger Seth Godin is moving on and swears off publishing forever… Each news item launches a thousand ships of furious speculation. It’s not even a question of whether or not the traditional paper-based publishing industry is dying, the question everyone is asking is, when will it die? Or has it died already? Is that breathing we hear, or a death rattle?

So the question many writers are asking me is, should I even worry about getting published? Should I concentrate my efforts on eBooks instead?

Far from Dead

The truth is that in 2010, the print publishing industry is far from being dead.

While Amazon eBook sales now do exceed hardcover sales by a ratio of 1.43 to 1, we should remember that many of those “sales” are 25-cent downloads, many of them are free, and many of them are what, if we saw them in print, could be easily be mistaken for brochures rather than honest-to-goodness books. (Have you noticed every internet marketer seems to have a free Kindle or iPad edition of their latest “free report” these days?)

In fact, according to the NY Times, half of the best selling books on Kindle are being given away for free by the publishers. Why?  In order to promote sales of the paper versions.

More Facts You Should Know

In Larssen’s case, we should also remember that his novel, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,  published in 2007, sold 27 million copies in print, before it reached the million dollar milestone on Amazon’s Kindle. By all accounts, print sales vastly exceed eBook sales.

Here are some more facts to ponder:

The iPad is expected to sell, at most, 7 million units in 2010.

By April 2010, the Kindle had sold (at best estimate) 3.3 million units.

The average royalty cheque for authors is estimated to be less than 2% for their eBooks, which means 98 percent of their royalties still come from paper books.

In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 books are published each year in traditional book publishing. Less than 1 percent make it to bestseller status.

The American Publishing Association estimates e-books represent 8.5% of sales as of mid-2010. In 2009 they were only 3%.

While eBooks are certainly gaining in overall market share, and are going to become bigger as time passes, the print publishing industry is still today the dominant player. Any hype saying the contrary right now is just that – hype.

Related posts:

1. The Self-Publishing Conundrum
2. Fear of Rejection

The fear of rejection is as healthy as the fear of fire. But in a competitive culture such as ours, it is by no means as useful. It actually can become a serious problem, especially if you are a shy or introverted personality. Below are five steps to overcoming the fear of rejection.

As a young adolescent, I could be extremely shy. My fear of rejection was nearly a phobia. I recall with painful clarity seeing three girls from my class approaching me on the sidewalk and actually crossing the street to walk two full blocks out of my way, rather than face the prospect of them rejecting my “hello”.

Paying your Dues

I had a conversation recently with a friend who is in the music industry. The music industry is structured, she said, to weed out all but the most talented, or the most persistent. And, she wondered aloud, if writing was not much the same.

Definitely. In my personal experience, there are two occupations that will teach you how to face the fear of rejection – writing and sales.

One cannot be a professional writer without facing rejection. At every step of the writing process, rejection awaits with open arms – with the query letter, the submitted manuscript, with the editors’ board meeting, with reviewers, and with the audience.  However, there are no training programs to help writers to deal with their fear of rejection. Understanding how often famous books were rejected before being published certainly helps. It also helps to understand that even the best selling books, and the most successful movies are rejected more often than not. The number of people who don’t buy the book, or do not see the movie, or click on a link to a blog, always outnumbers those who do.

I was fortunate to work for MetLife early in my career, which is a company that actually trains its sales staff to embrace rejection. Let’s face it, no one wants to listen to someone selling life insurance. So their sales reps are trained to expect most prospects to say “No!”, when trying to book a sales appointment. So in order to combat the fear of rejection, sales reps are trained to calculate their commissions, not by the sales they make, but by the rejections they receive. On average you need three appointments to make a sale, and each sale is worth, lets say $500 in commission. So, in order to make a sale, you will have to pick up the phone and hear the word “no!” about 100 times. But that’s okay – because when you do the math, you know that each “no!” you receive, puts 5 dollars in your pocket. Most good sales people, regardless of the industry, know this, and know their numbers (which vary by industry and by person of course) better than they know their children’s birth dates.

Cherish the No’s

So whatever you need to do that puts you in the path of rejection, simply take a few minutes and think about the numbers.

If you’re looking for a job, ask the first person who interviews you how many applications they receive, and how many interviews they are having. If they received 50 resumes and are interviewing 5 people for one job in your field, you now have a rough idea of what you are facing. All things else being equal (which they never are, of course) you would have to submit your resume about 250 times to get 5 interviews to get one job offer.

Now sales people keep track of these numbers for years, and so they are based on a very large sample of no’s. When you’re looking for one job, keeping track of your progress for the first time, the sample of data you have is much smaller, and therefore less precise. So I would suggest asking people you know how many times they submitted their resume before getting their job. You have just doubled your sample. Ask every person you submit your resume to, and you’ll be improving your accuracy with every phone call.

You can use these same methods for any time you risk the fear of rejection… even dating. If a girl declines you in giving her phone number, why not ask her, “By the way, just out of curiosity, how many times do you get asked for you number each week?” When she tells you, ask her if she ever says yes. Be subtle, and certainly don’t let her feel that she is just going to be a number to you.

5 Steps to Overcoming the Fear of Rejection

1. Understand rejection is a necessary step towards success. With every rejection, remind yourself that you are paying your dues to earn the success you wish to achieve.

2. Estimate, to the best extent possible, how many times you will need to be rejected to reach your goal.

3. Track your rejections. Mark them in a notebook or a sheet of paper at home. With every check mark, remind yourself that you are one step closer to achieving your goal.

4. Remember these are averages, and that even if you calculated that you need ten no’s for every yes, it may happen on the third attempt, or the thirteenth. Keep an open mind and be flexible.

5. If you have exceeded the rejections you estimated by fifty percent, and still have not found success, stop and look at your strategy. Where possible, ask what you might be doing wrong. You’d be surprised how often people are willing to tell you why you did not get the job, or the sale, or even why the girl said no when you asked her for her phone number.

Not surprisingly, you may find that asking questions in that last step will actually lead, in itself, to the success you were looking for.

If this was helpful to you, you may be interested in seeing how rejection fits in as a cornerstone to other important elements of success.

Related posts:

1. Success Is a Choice
2. Jobs for Writers

Why is finding time to do the things we want or need to do so difficult for some, and so easy for others?

Once in a while I get a comment from clients asking how it is I always seem to be so well organized: having information seemingly at my fingertips, accessible within moments of needing it; responding to emails and phone calls within a relatively short time; having deliverables actually delivered on the day they were promised. Things like that.

And the answer is laughable. It’s because I’m the most disorganized person I’ve ever met. Seriously. I’m really a slob. I just tried to open a mango and had to take a shower. It wasn’t pretty, and would probably have been enough to send the most militant vegetarian off fruit forever. I also get lost in thought quite easily, which makes me a bit absent-minded. I’m the guy who puts the milk in the cupboard and has to call his own cell phone because he doesn’t remember where he left it. And to add insult to injury, I also happen to be one of these people who was born left-handed, but was trained out of it at an early age for reasons I still don’t understand but might have something to do with fears of witchcraft, but I really don’t know. This makes me ambidextrous at a few things, but just basically clumsy at anything society considers necessary or practical. I can write with both hands, and they are equally illegible.

But I’ve acknowledged these things about myself. So when it comes to anything important, I know that if I don’t make a concerted effort to keep on top of every detail, it will take only 45 minutes before I’m lost in a quagmire of backlogged emails, stacks of paper, and forgotten deadlines.

It’s much the same for finding time to do things that are important to me. Many people ask me where I seem to find the time to do what I do. Not only do I get lost in thoughts and daydreams (I’ve lost whole afternoons gazing at trees and clouds), I’m also an experienced procrastinator (Revenue Canada can attest to this). That can be a lethal combination when it comes to managing a dozen websites, editing manuscripts, writing novels, or anything else that requires daily shots of intensity over long periods of time. But, again, I understand these things about myself. I know that if I don’t do it today… I’ll probably not get back to it for weeks, or months.

Time is a democratic phenomenon. We are each given 24 hours each day – no more, no less. We can search all we want, but there are no more hours to be found than what we already have. The most important tactic I have found to ensure I make room in the time I have for something important, is to first plant a seed.

As an example, I decided to write about this topic several days ago. And I knew if I didn’t take that seed of an idea and plant it somewhere, it would soon get lost in that big virtual duffel bag where so many of my ideas get placed and forgotten. Instead of worrying about finding the time to do it, I took just one minute, and found a nice graphic and uploaded it into WordPress. I didn’t have to think about it again. Instead, it began thinking about me. It called to me, barely audible the first day, but getting louder and more pronounced, the seed of an idea taking shape (through mixed metaphors and all) until it finally, today at lunchtime, shouted out, demanding my attention. And now its just about done.

So instead of worrying about finding the time to do the things you most want to do, try making the time today – one minute, five minutes, or even an hour. The momentum of the smallest action will soon find its way back to you.

Related posts:

1. Finding Passion in Your Life