Talk It Up!

Show me your calendar, and I'll show you your priorities

"Show me your calendar, and I'll show you your priorities."

Thus spake Vickie Austin during her Brand Called You seminar a while back. This phrase has really stuck with me over the months since that seminar, more so than anything else she said.

Show me your calendar, and I'll show you your priorities.

What is your priority? What are you letting slide? Pull out your Palm, your Google calendar, your day planner, whatever you use. Take a quick glance at your appointments over the last few weeks. Where are you spending the most valuable, irreplacable asset you have, your time? Are you meeting with new clients? Spending time with your kids? Building relationships by connecting with old clients and colleagues? Participating in Facebook? Answering email from clients, friends, colleagues? Writing that book? Working out? Writing your newsletter? Working on your marketing plan? Taking a seminar or class for professional development? Learning something new? Spending time with your spouse? Spending time alone, relaxing, watching TV or enjoying a favorite hobby? Reading a business book? Reading a pleasure book? Volunteering for your favorite cause?

Show me your calendar, and I'll show you your priorities.

You may feel you "should" spend more time reading business books, participating in your professional organizations, enjoying your favorite hobby or going on dates with your spouse. OK. So what are you going to do about it? First, look at your calendar. Where are you spending your time now? Before you can make time for this rising priority, you have to figure out where your time is going now. Divide your waking day into one-hour or two-hour chunks and look at the last two weeks. Where is the biggest percentage of your time going? What next? And next? And next?

Are you surprised at what your priorities actually are, based on how you choose to spend your time? If you're not spending time doing something, it's not a priority. And if you don't think your calendar reflects your priorities, change it. Drop anything that is taking a large amount of time that you do not consider a value or priority in your life. Is volunteering for that board taking a disproportionate amount of your time? Learn how to just say no so you can spend more time working out, with your kids or writing your novel. Are there activities that aren't giving you a return? Maybe you should adjust your newsletter or podcast publishing schedule so you can make time to take a professional seminar or work out two additional times a month.

Every six months, take a look at your calendar. Does it reflect your stated values and priorities? If not, be brutal. Make those changes so that your life reflects YOU.

Holiday Time Stress Guide

A great link for this first week of December:

Holiday Time Stress Guide Eve Abbott shares brain function secrets and how to reduce stress at the end of the year. From the guide:

Light is the most powerful internal clock-setting factor. Obviously, different
mammals have different clocks; cats are active at night and sleep all day.
Most people are active during the day and sleep at night. Although I have
observed that right-brain dominant people are often ‘night owls’. Everyone
can use full-spectrum light bulbs to improve all visual activities while
reducing stress at work and at home. Buy LED decorative lights and use
80-90% less energy to keep your holiday glow on!

On my way to get some full-spectrum light bulbs for the long Chicago winter...

Contact Management Software Review

For the last few months, I've been testing, trying and turning over Oprius software. Since I posted a few months ago about my desperate need to improve my contact management skills, the nice folks over at Oprius kindly asked me to try out their program. Now, full disclosure: they generously gave me free access to the run of the program's features as a member of the Oprius Advisory Board.

Yeah, that's a fancy way of saying that they gave me a new toy to see if I could break it. ;-)

Here's my rundown so far. First, what is it? It's an online contact management software program. That means that all your contacts and information will be stored online and available via password to you anywhere you can find internet access.

What I like about Oprius so far:

• It's created by Mac geeks, so they remembered to make it compatible with Macs in addition to PC's.
• It's easy to enter contact info; I can input a business card in under a minute.
• Tasks are linked to contacts. This is HUGE for me, since I can connect "send handwritten thank-you note" the day after meeting someone, then "call to follow up" a week later, then "ask to add to email list" two weeks later, then "call to touch base" three months later. This way, each time I complete a task, I add one method of contact three months later. PRESTO! No danger that I'll just forget to contact someone and lose touch!
• Also, under the Task view, I can see all my contact tasks at once. SWEET! This way, I can sit down on one afternoon and go down the list, calling everyone that I haven't called in a while whose task came up.
• Also re: the Task view, I can check off each task as it's done, and it disappears. We all know how much I love to check off lists, yes? Very satisfying.
• You can create categories for contacts--as many as you'd like. So I can mark a contact as a "podcaster" or a "client" and look at those groups all at once.
• Oprius has added a brand-new email function, so a contact can be emailed at a click. So I'm looking at Jane Schmo's contact info page, and if I click on her email address, a box opens up for me to email her directly. Saves the click over to the mail program, which is nice.

Things I Wish Oprius Did (and they tell me they're working on):

• Sync with my Palm. Currently, I enter info into Oprius only, since I'm far too lazy to enter it into both Oprius and my Palm. This means that if I'm NOT at a computer, I don't have access to my new contacts on my Clie unless I've entered them separately.
• Sync wth a mail label program. Since many of my contacts lose track of emails and don't always have time for phone calls, I use old-fashioned snail mail as well. I'd give my eye teeth to be able to click on 20 names and have 20 mailing labels created just like that.

If anyone else uses Oprius, what do you think? Anything else you like or don't like?

NO year's resolutions

Hello and welcome to 2007! While my holidays were far from restful, they were certainly a lot of fun. How were yours? :-)

I've noticed quite a few New Year's resolution posts, which always make me chuckle a little. I never got the hang of resolutions made in January; lately, I've been focusing more on direction. That is, checking in with my goals every now and then and making sure that Heidi Miller Presentations is going in the direction I want it to go.

Also, I do my goal-setting in June, when the trade shows die down and I can focus better on setting specific, attainable goals for the next 12 months. And if you've been listening to Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter for long enough, you'll know that I use the Your Best Year Yet method, which involves evaluating all the roles you play in life (good friend; good husband/wife; successful entrepreneur; healthy person; generous activist/volunteer, etc.) and  setting goals for each role/area.

I like the approach because it goes so far beyond the "work out more/get in shape" and "um... just get more clients and make more money" shapelessness that New Year's resolutions tend to take. You list the areas of life and work that make up YOU and everything you care about and set specific, attainable goals for each one (that is, "go out dancing once a month," "spend two hours a week with each daughter" or one of my favorites, "work out 150 times." So hey, if you're looking for a way to make those resolutions stick, give it a try. And let me know how it goes, will ya?

So basically, this is my way of saying I have no resolutions to share because I'm still working on goals from last June. But stay tuned--I'm considering doing a yearly goal-setting podcast each year when I do my own personal goal-setting, so I'll let you know.

For now, I will share a few things I'm happy to say I'd personally like to see more of in 2007:

• My yoga instructor. I love that my new medicine allows me the luxury of taking more strenuous exercise classes, and I'm loving yoga!
• My local coffee shop. With such a hectic schedule these days, I rarely get to go and work in a coffee shop, something I used to love to do.
• The dance floor. (see above) Took swing and ballroom dancing up again, and I'm thrilled that my muscle memory seems to be pretty good.
• Convention centers in Europe and Canada. I very much enjoy foreign travel and the chance to speak French, so I'm looking forward to more exotic travel.
• Geeks. Ever since Podcast Expo, I've enjoyed meeting all kinds of podcasters, and I want to continue with this trend.

Geek Girl Minute

My favorite Fireflox plugin this week is the webmarker. Awesome! Lets you highlight text on a webpage; you can even bookmark and send the highlighted pages to others. GREAT for organizing Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter!

Contact management

Since blogging and podcasting have expanded my contact list by leaps and bounds, I'm in need of some serious contact management software. Most of my contacts are on my Palm, but I need something more structured. Any suggestions? Here's what I'd need/like:

• Talks to my Clie/Palm software easily
• Could be used easily to print mailing labels from
• Can make annotations of when I last talked to the contact and what about
• Works WELL on a Mac (none of this Western Digital "oh yeah it's cross-platform" and then, after six hours of tech support, the damn thing STILL doesn't work)
• Can easily export, say, email addresses to an autoresponder/email newsletter program

Any suggestions, o geeks mightier than I?

Organization

The new episode of The Great Big Small Business Show is up here! The topic? It's a great one: organization!

A balancing act

   

No, not THAT kind of balanced! (But if you're wondering, these guys are  Barely Balanced, an acrobat/juggling act that I'm quite fond of--go see them at Bristol Faire if you're near Chicago this summer)

No, this is about life balance. I've given Life Balance software a try, and here's my preliminary review.

The Good:

• You can set up the broad categories for your life: making a living, interacting with family and friends, taking care of myself, etc. You can change them, of course, to whatever you like--"living gracefully" or "social media activism" or what have you, so that you can eventually see an overview of your roles/values in life, not just what tasks have been done.
• Broad categories are divided into tasks and subtasks
• There is a project option for "subtasks must be completed in order," which is handy for projects in which A must be done before B, which must be done before C, etc.
• Tasks can be tagged by location, so with a click you can see what to do if you're in the office, in the car, at the gym, on the phone
• Tasks can be tagged as repeating (like going to the gym every Tuesday) or by a certain date (like getting the audio file to Becky by tomorrow)
• Pie charts. LOVE the pie charts! I've been clicking on my own pie, noting that the "relax and enjoy life" category is far too teensy a piece of the pie, and adding tasks every day to make sure I have a little Heidi Time each day. I feel the difference already!
• It's overall very helpful in checking, well, your BALANCE in life. It does exactly what you'd think it does. It's obvious if you're spending all your time working and no time with friends or too much time cleaning/organizing/paying bills and not enough exercising and taking care of yourself.

The Less Good:

• It is incredibly complicated and time-consuming to set up. I found that I had to set up just one project at a time, because tagging each subtask by importance, place, time, etc. becomes mind-boggling when the overall amount of tasks is in excess of 100. I have instead taken the last five days to add tasks/categories as I think of them, and I keep tweaking.
• It doesn't seem to sync well with my PDA. The program will sync, but now instead of taking one minute to HotSync, my little Clie will work on syncing for over 30 minutes and never quite finish. It can be done, but takes an unreasonable amount of extra time.
• Before each HotSync, you must choose whether the computer info overrides what you input into the PDA or vice-versa. Why is it that Palm software can sync the two, but for LifeBalance, you have to choose or it can't figure it out? So you have to remember whether you input info through your PDA or computer last. Very inconvenient.

Overall, I do like the software. I am constantly struggling for balance with work, friends, etc., and this is a good way to see that visual representation of that balance (or lack thereof). And did I mention how much I love the pie charts? :-) The project option really helps with my business marketing projects very nicely as well. And it's having the desired benefit of reminding me to do something for myself--get a pedicure, go for a walk, take a bubble bath, listen to my favorite song and sing along.

What have been your experiences with this software? I'm an organization freak, and I want to know!

Balance? What balance?

How ironic is it that, since I downloaded Life Balance software three days ago, I haven't even had time to sit down and organize my life/business/client/leisure flow enough to actually use the software?

I swear that I was looking forward to sitting down, thinking about the areas of my life that need balancing, and inputting them into the program so that I could check the balance on a daily basis. Really, I was! But then the car started making odd noises, and tracking down a local mechanic took priority. Then came a spate of prospective-client inquiries, each of which required personalized attention and follow-up. Then came my decision to finally try yoga, along with the subsequent pain and moaning the following day. You get the idea.

Still, I'm still very much looking forward to taking that big-picture look at what is important to Heidi Miller, the entrepreneur as well as Heidi the Podcasting Princess, Heidi the Healthy Arthritis Gal, Heidi the Friend, Heidi the Neat Freak, Heidi the Dancer, Heidi the Dreamer and Heidi the Lying-on-a-Beach-Somewhere-Exotic Gal.

Review of Life Balance to come!

Save yourselves!

For anyone unsure of backup methods and pitfalls, take a peek at Sallie Goetsch-rhymes-with-sketch's latest post in the Fileslinger Backup blog. It may be too late for me, but save yourselves!

30boxes internet calendar

I've been waiting for a good social web-based calendar program to come out for us not-quite-geeks, and I think it's here! The beta version of 30boxes that was released yesterday was so popular that I wasn't able to set up an account until today. To me, this is a sign that the software must have something to it. And I gave it my best I-don't-need-to-read-no-stinkin'-manual stab to see just how intuitive the interface really was.

Nice! Just type in an event, such as "haircut" or "School Equipment Show in Orlando" into the big, blank box and click "Add." But it's the sharing feature that makes it really handy. Just add a friend or associate's email address, choose a level of transparency (all entries;  all entries except those marked "private"; or all entries marked with tags you specify, such as "client events" or "family events"), and no more having to worry about booking over Aunt Silvia's 80th birthday or your biggest client's annual Mardi Gras dinner!

My only complaint is that in order to add a time frame to a new event, three extra clicks are required--one to add the event, one to select the event again and one to edit the event in more detail. Still, the social sharing capability more than makes up for this fine point, in my book.

Simple but true

Hello and good morning! I'm in a fabulous mood, as I always am after teaching a vigorous water aerobics workout at my local YMCA. And having a bit of time to sit down and read a nice chunk of Eve Abbott's fun book (yes, organizing is fun for me!), How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain is really making my morning.

A few jewels I ran across today that, to me, are worth the price of the book in themselves. File these under simple but true:

• With respect to organizing computer files, which the computer will automatically sort alphabetically: "What I do is I put an underscore or a space at the beginning of the name of the folder that I want to float to the top of the directory." Since I'm a visual learner, I color-code my most-touched files, but I love this idea, too!
• Also, "If you're working on something daily, name it with an exclamation point, so it appears at the top of any directory you search." Again with the simple brilliance!

Is this gal a genius or what? Thanks, Eve!

So How Does Your Brain Work?

You may remember Eve Abbott, the Organizer Extraordinaire, from a podcast mention earlier. Well, she and I have been emailing back and forth, and not only am I very much looking forward to reading her new book, but I finally had some internet down time to take a look at the brain assessments that she recommended for readers.

The free online assessments are fun to take and only take a few minutes, but the benefit is that you might find out something about your learning style that you didn't already know. For me, the results weren't surprising: I knew from years of teaching French and writing textbooks to accomodate different learning styles (visual, tactile, kinesthetic, oral, etc.) that I'm a primarily visual learner. In fact, I used to have difficulty taking tests because I could remember exactly how my beautifully-organized notes looked on the page, but I couldn't remember the actual content on the pages!

Other clues: oral directions don't make sense to me. I can't interpret directions unless I can look at a map (visual) at the same time and mark out my path with a pen (tactile) so that I can visualize the pattern of turns as I'm driving along. If I get lost, checking directions doesn't make sense to me, but I can always find my way if I can visualize the path I marked on the map with the pen!

What's the point of knowing your learning style? Well, I haven't read Ms. Abbott's book yet (although being both an organizing and pop-psych junkie, I'm very much looking forward to it!), but I don't find it hard to believe that if you are trying to organize your life, work and communications around a mode of learning that doesn't make sense to your brain, you're probably making a lot of extra work for yourself.

And we shameless self-promoters don't like extra work, do we? ;-)