Archive for February, 2010
Time Management: Setting Boundaries
Posted by: | CommentsCan You Relate?
"I'm late! I'm late!"
Some days I get so much done I fall into bed accomplished and satisfied, knowing my time was well spent and productive, vowing to do it again the next day, and the day after that. Everything clicked, my time management skills worked wonders, and I managed to meet every goal I set.
Other days I get a late start, find myself off-track and under the gun until I finally call it a night, and vow to get back in the saddle the next day.
Then there are the days that are a complete wash, leave me feeling defeated and frustrated, angry at myself.
The Defeated Days are usually caused by one thing: I’ve allowed boundaries to be blurred or downright crossed, and for no good reason.
You love people. I mean, you really love people. But the people in your life don’t see what your life is like from the inside. They don’t know that you have more than a few people in your life who want a piece of your time, more than a few people you want to talk to, and people you have to spend time with if you’re going to be successful and be able to make a living doing what you want to do.
OK, yes, they do know. But they’re not aware of the jockeying for position all of those other people are doing, and how much you wish you could meet every need and still get your other goals met.
They don’t know that in the ten minutes you’ve been typing that blog post that was due three days ago, and looking anxiously at your massive to-do list, that the dust bunnies gathering in the corners of your office are starting to grow legs and your refrigerator is beginning to look like it did when you were in college. In that same ten minutes, your phone has rung not once, but three times from three different people. You’re dreading checking your voicemail, because there are phone calls from yesterday you still haven’t returned.You’ve had four new emails come in and twenty Facebook updates and invitations to attend events and join causes and groups. The blogs you subscribe to, while very valuable in wisdom and information, are piling up in your inbox waiting to be skimmed for nuggets. You’ve got a phone appointment with a new client in two hours, two prospects waiting for calls back, a networking meeting you really should go to, and a support ticket you’re waiting for a call back on.
Oh, and your child has a soccer game, your wife says she’s lonely, and you haven’t talked to your mother in two weeks.
Feeling anxious yet?
Truth is, getting at lest 8 hours of work done a day has become a battle against technology that has now made you available to everyone, anytime.
Short of pulling a disappearing act and changing your identity, what can you do?
If you want to be in control of your time, you have to learn Rule #1 of Time Management: Setting Boundaries.
Boundaries protect you from people who unknowingly are keeping you from achieving your goals. They’re a Time Management strategy that will ultimately protect others from the meltdown you’re bound to have if you don’t set firm boundaries and stick to them.
Over the years of wearing a few hats at once, I’ve learned to set boundaries, communicate them lovingly, and stick to them. Boundaries are what keep me smiling when most people would be freaking out.
Five Boundaries I’ve Learned To Set
1) Learn to say “No.” I heard a pastor once say that for everything he said yes to, he had to say no to something else, and that something else was usually his family. When someone asks something of you, ask yourself, “What will I have to say no to if I say yes to this?” and then make a decision. I don’t know why, but saying “No” seems to be the most difficult thing for nurturers/caretakers to learn how to do, whether they’re male or female. But if you don’t start saying “No” — and practicing saying “No” with no excuses — you will never get control of your time. Other people will control you, and you’ll begin to resent them and even avoid them.
2) Decide how many hours a day you’ll devote to your work or career, and then stick to it.Yes, flexibility is good, and you need to keep yourself open to opportunities, but for the most part, stick to a schedule each day. Schedules are boundaries that will keep you from wasting time, and they come in handy for communicating boundaries to your friends and family. Schedules also help you deal with clients or vendors who talk too much and go off on tangents. Your set schedule will remind you to bring ramblers back to the point, and will keep you from being a rambler yourself, because you’ll keep in mind that you only have so much time left to get done all you need to get done.
3) Don’t take personal calls or answer personal emails during those hours you’ve determined to devote to work or career, unless you’re desperately in need of a short ten-minute break. If you make or take a phone call, tell your friend that you have just ten minutes, and then when that ten minutes is up, get off the phone. If they say, “Just one more thing” and try to keep you on the phone, you say, “No, I have to get back to work now.” I’ve had friends who will not let me off the phone, and my heart for people keeps me from being rude and just hanging up. Instead, those are friends I don’t call when I only have ten minutes, because they don’t respect boundaries. They probably just don’t understand.
4) Keep a calendar next to your desk and make sure you have one day a week when you do NOTHING but spend time with friends and family, if they’re not work. My day is Sunday, but yours can be any day you want. In order for me to set firm boundaries for myself and others every other day of the week, I need a day when I’m not doing any work, and that includes being around people who are draining. That’s a boundary in itself. Having a day of rest is a Time Management strategy that keeps me from becoming a slave to my work and neglecting the healthy relationships that keep me human and connected. I am beyond blessed to have the most amazing, loving family and friends, but I realize not all of us do. Make your day of rest a day of rest in every way.
5) Use A Time Map. There are so many ways to do this, and I’ll cover them in a post on Time Management, but basically Time Mapping means clearly delineating specific times each day and/or week for specific tasks/goals. You tweak and adapt your Time Map when it’s not working anymore, or when you’ve added new things that need to be fit in to your goals.
My latest Time Mapping strategy is this: I drew a clock face on a dry erase board next to my desk, and blocked off parts of each hour for specific things that are important to me so I can meet my goals for each day without fail.
Here’s what my Time Map Clock looks like:
My Hourly Schedule
The ten minutes before each hour is for “personal” connections. I connect with friends or family during that ten minutes of each hour. The next ten minutes immediately after that is for “chores.” Chores can be anything non-work related that needs to be taken care of. For example, if you work in a home office, go do a load of dishes, throw in a load of laundry, do some filing, vacuum a rug, pay some bills. If you work for someone else, clean your desk, empty your garbage can, organize your paperwork. Ten minutes. That’s it.
I put my “chores” time directly after the “personal” time strategically. If I’m on a personal phone call and need a couple of minutes to finish it up, I start a chore that I can do while I talk. If I have to, I strap my phone to my waist and use a headset. But doggone it, my goal is to end that phone call before that next ten minutes is up. The only time I wouldn’t end it is if the person on the other end is in crisis and it’s got to be dealt with then. And believe me, it’d be a real crisis to keep me on the phone. If there’s no crisis but the friend needs more time, I promise to call them back when I take my next break.
The next ten minutes after “chores” is specifically set aside for Twitter, because I’m building new relationships and need to devote time for reading Tweets, retweeting, replying, and tweeting my own stuff. I’ve found that if I leave Twitter running in the background and go at it all day, I don’t get much else done, so this is a boundary I’ve set up to protect myself from my love of connecting. I can’t wait for the day when I can connect with others all day with no negative ramifications on the rest of my goals. If I play my cards right, that’s going to happen.
The other thirty minutes of each hour is strictly for work. As you can see, I have a list written on the dry erase board next to the clock face for things I do every day. I have other lists as well, including a To-Do list in a notebook for specific tasks and a master list of goals on a dry erase board above my desk.
These are just a few of the boundaries I’ve set to protect my relationships, myself, and my goals. They’re my secret weapons against Time Vampires — the ones who don’t understand the demands on my life, and the ones I bring upon myself through my own bad habits.
So, Reader, what boundaries have you set up to protect your time and meet your goals?
After reading this, what boundaries do you need to set?
Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!
Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.
The Top 10 Twitter Personality Types
Posted by: | CommentsI’m an observer of people. I could spend hours sitting on a bench in a park or a mall, imagining the lives of those passing by, trying to peg their personalities through the various ways they present: clothing, countenance, language, even the way they carry themselves. The Twitterverse is a kind of park bench itself, except in this case, the people passing by are all vying for our attention, hoping someone, somewhere hears them and is listening.
Over the last 7 weeks of life in the Twitterverse, I’ve seen quite a few distinct Twitter Personality Types emerge. Here’s my list of the Top 10, with real life examples you can check out yourself. Do you see yourself here? If so, we’re probably following you!
1. The Political Curmudgeon
This Tweeter is a cranky, irritable sort who is disillusioned with some segment of society and uses Twitter to voice his displeasure. Depending on your own level of political interest, The Political Curmudgeon is either amusing, annoying, or downright inspirational. There are a lot of Curmudgeons right now who either think Obama is the anti-Christ or Sarah Palin is the biggest idiot to enter the political scene, and who believe that anyone who supports the target of their anger is either uneducated, brainwashed, blind, or all three. Political Curmudgeons usually religiously follow Millionaire Curmudgeons who get paid to keep us riled up. Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher — the Talking Head Curmudgeons who dream up ways to demonize their opponents and keep the flame wars going so they can keep getting paid the big bucks. It’s a nice business if you can break into it, I suppose. I follow a couple of non-famous Political Curmudgeons on both sides of the aisle, as well as those who don’t fit in anywhere, because it takes guts to be that open when you’re not being paid for it. I’m sure their inboxes are filled with hate DMs. Not for the faint of heart.
2. The Stay-At-Home Sharer
The Sharer is a sweetheart. She loves to read and learn, and will find any excuse she can to do so. She subscribes to blogs, follows people she finds interesting, and then shares the best of her finds with her followers, complete with links to original source material. She probably has her own blog as well. This is her work. She doesn’t get paid to do it, but that’s not why she does it. She’s helping people. The dishes might pile up and the dust bunnies are sticking to her kids’ socks, but those aren’t her priorities. The Sharer will be the Tweeter you see filling her day with @replies to all kinds of people, many of them other Sharers just like her. Some may call her an Internet Addict, but I have a special place in my heart for The Sharer. She’s always a very nice person, the kind you’d have over for coffee if she weren’t so busy.
3. The Sharer With Purpose
This kind of Tweeter shares so we’ll see them as experts in the field they’re sharing about. They’re staying up-to-date on the latest and greatest that’s breaking in their field of interest, and making sure you know that they know what’s going on. Many have accounts with url shorteners so they can share links to great source material and then track their readership, tweaking their Twitter campaigns accordingly to build credibility among their followers. Most are entrepreneurs who own their own small businesses and are using Twitter to reach a wider market, and quite a few of those have other remarkable interests and talents that they tout on the side. I learn a lot from The Sharer With Purpose and follow quite a few of them, building authentic online relationships and doing what I can to spread the word about them to my followers. May I recommend a few of the latter? @georgebross, @lpgeffen, @dadekian, and @eastofprov. They know their stuff and they’re genuinely nice people. And no, I wasn’t paid to say so.
4. The Celebrity
This Tweeter can be a local celebrity like a news anchor or meteorologist, or a big-time celebrity with national or even international fame. They Tweet for different reasons, but I think it’s safe to say they want to connect with their existing fan base in a personal way and increase their fan base while they’re at it. We all love getting a peek at what a celebrity is like offstage or offscreen, and The Celebrity Tweeter gives us that sneak peek. We follow Celebrity Tweeters for different reasons, but c’mon — who doesn’t feel special when a celebrity acknowledges you, or even better, follows you back? I actually switched news channels after talking to @paulmmueller (ABC6) behind the scenes about the horrors of reporting on The Station fire, and discovering a reporter with a heart who hasn’t been jaded by the things he’s seen.
On this topic, I’ve seen one young woman who has complained publicly that she sends hundreds of @replies to one national celebrity who never answers her back. That’s a little scary, and I’m sure the celebrity thinks so, too.
5. The Bona Fide Expert
These are the Tweeters we follow because we want to learn from them, and they know it. They’ve built their social media careers on being seen as experts who started out just like us, Tweeting into the void and hearing nary a DM or @reply back. But they kept at it, tweaking and learning and applying and tweaking again, until doggone it, people started listening! I love The Bona Fide Experts, and learn as much as I can from them. The Bona Fide Experts also blog and join forces with other Bona Fide Experts to help the rest of us seize the day like they did, and maybe even make a respectable living using Social Media Marketing. Some I follow closely are @ChrisBrogan, @lkr (Laura Roeder), @JasonFalls (Social Media Explorer) and @DuctTape (John Jansch). I mention them because not only are they Bona Fide Experts, but they take the “social” in social media seriously.
6. The Christian Evangelist
This Tweeter sees the Internet as a mission field, and spends his day Tweeting about Jesus, sharing scripture, and encouraging people. He has a lot of followers, most of whom are already Christians. Once in a while The Evangelist will get into a stirring apologetics debate with an atheist who seems hell-bent on winning an argument that simply can’t be won or lost on this side of death, and who accuses The Evangelist of believing in fairy tales. Eventually, when the debate dissolves into name-calling and personal attacks, The Evangelist usually wishes the atheist well, ends the debate, and goes back to Tweeting about Jesus to the Twitterverse until another atheist itching for a fight comes along. In the meantime, followers of all spiritual persuasions lurk in the background and read The Evangelist’s evidence, and some are changed by it. I like The Evangelist, and I follow a couple of them if they’re polite and intelligent, like @MikeJody. It’s a tough gig, I’m sure. Like The Political Curmudgeon, this Tweeting purpose is not for the faint of heart.
7. The Activist
The Activist is a Tweeter driven to Tweet about a heart-felt cause, even if it’s not the original reason they joined the Twitterverse. There’s the single Dad whose passion is to support and encourage other single Dads (@lagresto), the Mom who’s fighting back at the insurance company she says screwed her when she lost her husband and home to a fire (@STATEFARMSUCKS), the sports fanatic who knows every statistic and can’t get enough of the local sports scene (@bossprtsthennow), the conservative who’s convinced America is headed in the wrong direction (@walterga), and the Tweeter who’s made their passion their life’s work (@RIBloodCenter). These Tweeters see the Twitterverse as a vehicle to change the world one listener at a time. And once in a while, they make inroads and raise awareness about the things that mean so much to them, getting enough fuel to keep them going for another day.
8. The In-Your-Face Salesperson
This Tweeter makes no apologies for his Tweeting style. All he tweets about is himself and his awesome incredible money-making venture that you just have to get in on because holy crap you’re going to be rich just like him and then you can have all your dreams come true by working from home and you have to sign up NOW! I’m not sure how he garners so many followers (some of them have thousands!), but I suspect a lot of that might be through numbers inflation tools. You know what, though? If he’s making money and it’s honest money, more power to him! You know who The In-Your-Face Salesperson is, but just in case you’re wondering if this is you, here’s what you look like: @inetmarketing4u. I only name this Tweeter because they were the most recent to start following us — it was an easy find.
9. The Porn Pusher
What more do I need to say? When it comes to pornography, the only limits are your imagination, and you name it, they’re pushing it. These are the Tweeters who have no qualms about making money off loneliness and addiction, and who are bent on getting as many in their corner of the world as possible, for a host of sordid reasons including their own deep-seated issues with sexuality. I block these people, and I’m certainly not going to name names. I don’t want to do a thing to help send them traffic. I’d say more, but I won’t.
10. The Business Owner/Entrepreneur
This is my “people group,” the reason I blog and Tweet, and the people I want to help through this blog. The Business Owner/Entrepreneur Tweeter knows that social media is a must if he wants to compete in today’s marketplace, and he’s usually hungry for information that will light his path in the middle of the cacophony of Twitter chatter. There are many who are in it for the same reason I am, to help others along the way as they share about their own business — people like @monikamcg . A few, like @hardwareguy860, make regular use of Twitter to give updates on projects they’re working on. Others seem lost and unsure of how to proceed, and then there are those who are up to their ears in projects and can’t find the time for social media, even though it’s the one tool that might enable them to break out of the daily grind and into another sphere of influence.
This is where we were until we decided that the time we invested into social media was worth the man-hours and would give us more bang for our buck than traditional marketing. I live for The Business Owner/Entrepreneur who follows us, no matter where they are in the Twitterverse experience. Seeing these Tweeters succeed is what drives me.
So, Reader, do you lay claim to any of these Twitter Personality Types?
Which Twitter Personality Types did I miss?
Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!
Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.
“Your Backstage Pass To Twitter” with Laura Roeder (Pt 2)
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Laura Roeder, "Your Backstage Pass To Twitter"
Yesterday I blogged about someone else for the first time — Laura Roeder, she of “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter” fame, among other endeavors. Her story is inspiring for those of you who want to build businesses that reflect your passions, who want to work for yourselves instead of being beholden by other people’s schedules and whims, and who want to hear that because of the power of social media and the incredible reach of the internet, regular people just like you can make it happen with some knowledge and ingenuity.
Read yesterday’s blog, “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter, Pt 1″ to get the beginning of the story and hear about Laura’s promotional webinar “The True Story of How a ‘Waste of Time Tool’ Launched My Six-Figure Business in Less Than 12 Months.” Don’t let the title mislead you into thinking this is another one of those “Get Rich Quick” schemes. It’s not. It takes work. It takes thought. It takes planning. But it’s work anyone can do, and best of all, harnesses the power of the internet and social media using free and inexpensive tools available to anyone.
More of Laura’s Story and A Few More Takeaways For You:
As promised, here are some more inspiring nuggets from Laura’s story about using Twitter to change direction and get the life she wanted:
1) Laura knew that networking is important, but she didn’t want to go to face-to-face networking events anymore, chasing down contracts. She saw and sees Twitter as one big networking event, and used it as such to build relationships with her followers. She gave very valuable tips on how to network, tips I’ve seen for face-to-face networking. Her point: Don’t be too “salesy”! Be interested in people!
2) Echoing something I’ve been saying to everyone, your online reputation is so important! Be encouraging. Be kind. Don’t criticize. Don’t start fights, and don’t take part in them. Relationship skills will go far in the social media world!
3) Leveraging her social reputation and her contact and follower lists, Laura decided to launch her first Online Training Program, “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter,” using a live video webinar format. She tweeted about a free promotional webinar she was going to host, which she did on February 12, 2009, with a launch date for the paid Online Training Program on February 19th. Excitedly, Laura shared that in that very first promo webinar, she made $3,000 in sales of “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter.” In case that’s not impressive, she shared that it would sometimes take her months to land a web design contract of that size (we know what that’s like). She made this in one live webinar.
4) Here’s where Twitter really worked for Laura. As she hosted her online video classes for “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter,” she would tweet about them, and her students would tweet as well — to each other and the world! The Twitter followers her webinar attendees had on their own lists were now hearing all about Laura and her training program. Free advertising for Laura and her brand!
Get People Talking!
By the way, at this point in Laura’s inspiring story, she didn’t even have a blog yet! A couple of months in, she built that blog using a generic, free template, nothing fancy, nothing embedded into another website. She said she hated to write, and the thought of having to put down her thoughts regularly in a blog was intimidating. Undaunted, Laura decided to use video to blog, and I’m sure that’s part of her success — video captures her personality and the “You can do this!” quality she has when she shares her knowledge and experience. Video blogging is the best way to make a human connection with your followers (note to self!). Of course, it helps if you have Laura’s infectious smile and her passion for what she does!
The best part of all? You can see that she’s one of us.
Everything Laura teaches is working for her: she’s building buzz. Here I am blogging about a total stranger, with no strings attached, no compensation, no reward other than I find her and her story amazing and inspiring. In a time when so many have lost their jobs, or have dreams of starting their own businesses but feel ill-equipped, she makes her viewer feel like everything will work out with ingenuity, relationship skills and a little hard work. My blogging about her is social proof enough for me.
The free webinar Laura gave yesterday was, in all honesty, to promote her online training program “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter” at the end. But that’s how she got the life she wanted, and got out of the career she was tired of. The way she talked about her paid online training program is so honest and refreshing, and she gave so much rich, useful content for free, that I walked away feeling like I just spent an hour with a girlfriend who’s made it and who shared her secrets with me.
Laura gave away much more valuable information that I’ve given you here. If you want to know how you can use Twitter to build the kind of reputation she’s built (and is still building), check out “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter.”
UPDATE: I just got word that Laura is offering her free webinar again this Friday, April 9, 2010, under the title “How I Built a 6 Figure Business From Scratch in Less Than One Year.” Do it!
Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!
Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.
