Business tips

The importance of spending time alone

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An artist needs time to create. A writer needs time to work out a story. A musician needs time to play and to compose. A saint needs time to pray.

Alone-time lets you refill the pitcher of your life from all the little daily leaks and keeps your soul from running dry.

Such are the musing of Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Gift from the Sea. Anne was married to Charles Lindbergh and was a fellow aviator and accomplished author. She survived the abduction and murder of her first child, went on to have five more children, and outlived her famous husband by decades finally passing at the age of 94. Continue reading →

Make one New Year’s resolution

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Here are the top four New Year’s resolutions. How many of these have been on your make-and-break list?

  • Lose weight
  • Get organized
  • Spend less/save more
  • Enjoy life to the fullest

I’m not big on making New Year’s resolutions because I don’t like to waste time. Statistics say that only 8% of us stick to New Year’s resolutions. Why spend time wishing for something that doesn’t happen most of the time for most people?

But these are great goals! So what can you do to make a resolution stick this year? Continue reading →

Getting in the question habit

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I recently read a great study by psychologist Arthur Aron positing whether two strangers could fall in love simply by asking each other a series of 36 questions. The first 13 questions are about how we present ourselves. The next 13 are about what we dream of and what we value. The last 13 are about friendship, family, and partners.

And here’s the clincher. At the end of the 36 questions, the two strangers have to face each other and look into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes. Aron says 2 minutes doesn’t do it – that’s simply terrifying. It’s at 4 minutes that things start to happen. Continue reading →

The gift of presence

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I worked as a volunteer at the Center for Grieving Children for about five years. The Center is a place families go to help express their grief in a safe and kind setting. Families go on a specific night each week and each member of the family meets with an age-appropriate group. Families attend for as long as they want – which is sometimes a few weeks, and sometimes over a year.

love-really-countsOne adult who was in my group for a long time told me her time at the Center was the only time all week she was herself – the rest of the time she was faking it, even with her kids, trying to seem happy and “get over” the death of her husband.

Some weeks at the Center she had no words. Other weeks she was depressed. Sometimes her issues were the loss. Other times she needed to talk about how hard it was to suddenly be a single parent. And some weeks she was happy and didn’t feel guilty about expressing that. Continue reading →

Drawing inspiration from Lisa Congdon

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If you’re looking for inspiration for starting a new life pursuit, go no further than Lisa Congdon.

Last summer, I had the privilege of meeting Lisa, a prolific artist, illustrator, and writer from Portland Oregon. Lisa works for clients around the world including the MoMA, Harvard University, Martha Stewart Living, Chronicle Books,  Simon & Schuster, and Random House Publishing.

lisa-congdon-artShe’s the author of six books, including the starving-artist-myth-smashing Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist, and illustrated books The Joy of Swimming, Fortune Favors the Brave, Whatever You Are, Be a Good One, Twenty Ways to Draw a Tulip and A Collection a Day. Her seventh book, A Glorious Freedom: On Being a Woman, Getting Older, and Living an Extraordinary Life will be released by Chronicle Books in 2017. Continue reading →

Tips for working together as a team

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I love to write and create as an individual, but my energy lifts and flows when I collaborate with focused, tight groups. This includes my team work at Catalog University, and with the volunteer work I do – especially in the theater. My family is also a great team. We get a ton done and have fun doing it!

So I was super psyched when Charles Duhigg’s new book Smarter Faster Better (awesome read) took a dive into figuring out what makes a great team. Charles writes about how Google spent four years on this problem. First, they looked at who was on a team and could find no pattern. It was only when they looked at how teams worked that they found magic.

So what do the most productive teams have in common? Continue reading →

You are an expert

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You are an expert. When you do that thing you do, energy flows through you and time slows down.

How do you do it?

  • You focus on the subject at hand
  • You take classes
  • You read books and listen to audio books
  • You practice
  • You write about your expertise so you process the information you’ve learned
  • You find others who do what you do, ask them questions, share what you know, and compare notes
  • You are curious and listen and watch for information that relates to your expertise
  • You spend time thinking

Continue reading →

15 ideas to manage a more effective meeting

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If you’re working to achieve organizational Zen and not waste time, corporate meetings are a huge challenge! According to a survey of U.S. professionals by Salary.com, meetings ranked as the number one office productivity killer.

Here are 15 ideas to help you run more effective meetings. Continue reading →

Embrace the facts – and move on

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Do you ever have these types of thoughts run through your head?

  • What if there’s traffic and I’m late?
  • Will my flight be on time and will I make my connection?
  • I want to talk to the new person at work, but what if they don’t want to talk to me?
  • What if my kid picks a career path I don’t like?
  • What if it rains tomorrow?

Continue reading →