Last night – after a full day of consulting and mommying – I looked at my to-do list and felt my heart sink. You know the feeling – it goes something like this: “There is no way I can get all this done. It’s all so complex and time consuming. I’m tired, my hands hurt and I would rather go to bed…but it’s now or never if I’m going to have this stuff ready on time. Ugh…here we go…”

Then something cool happened. I blasted through all three projects, one after the other. I was totally in the groove:  everything came together easily, I was enjoying myself, I finished it all up and sent it off to others for review, then found myself shutting down the computer at 11:24 – much earlier than expected. I had even forgotten that my hands were hurting.

Now today I’m asking myself, “Did it really ‘just happen,’ or was something else going on? How could I make it ‘happen’ again? Is there a way to bottle and reproduce the sense of Flow I experienced?” Now that would be really cool…

Maybe we have bottled Flow in a way, now that I think of it. I have seen something similar happen for all of our clients and workshop participants, just after we’ve taught them how to master mind clutter and manage their to-do lists effectively. When we give them a few minutes to implement what we’ve taught, it’s as if time stands still. We could leave the room for an hour, and our clients wouldn’t mind or even notice. We have taken to calling this moment ‘The Zone,’ and we’re ultra-respectful of it, careful not to rush it.

Mihály Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology professor considered to be the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology, as well as the architect of the notion of Flow. He describes Flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost."

This diagram shows the relationship between a person’s skills and the difficulty of the task at hand. Flow is found where our skills are well applied to a challenging situation. Click on the image to see the full-size version.

So does this mean that I got into the groove with my projects because they were really hard, and I have an amazing skill set? Um…nah. However, it might mean that my proclivities for organisation and collaboration empowered me be ready and able to complete the tasks when I had to pull it all together under pressure. Here’s what I mean:

Factors that contributed to my Flow experience:

• Groundwork – I was pulling together a final product that reflected months of thinking and planning.
• Collaboration – I had planned the projects and will implement them with a team that is a joy to work with.
• Application of Learning – I was applying discrete skills I’ve been acquiring through reading, taking courses, and discussing ideas with mastermind groups.
• Deadline – My bit really did need to happen yesterday if I was to avoid stressing other people out next week.
• Passion – I was working on things that I believe make a difference in the world.

OK, so if this means that good planning, teamwork and skill acquisition combined with our natural talents and passions might be key ingredients of our Bottled Flow Elixer, this is very good news indeed -  for all of us. We’re created with unique passions and talents, we can surround ourselves with people we work well with, and there is no shortage of deadlines and opportunities for acquiring new skills.

Now let me turn this discussion over to you. What do you think were the key elements of a Flow experience you’ve had lately?

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Of course we’re going to be talking about Work/Life Balance on this blog. For many, this is the Endgame of all personal productivity pursuits: BALANCE (cue angelic choir). I’m still fleshing out my views on this concept, but so far I’m thinking it’s not much more than a guilt-inducing buzzword. "Work/Life Balance" seems to be a convenient catch-all phrase we use to try and describe how we’re doing at this thing called living.

I work with high-powered, stressed-out people whose to-do lists are staggering, but their frustrations don’t stem from the fact that the ratio of work/life activity is not a tidy 50:50. The challenges are much deeper, running along the lines of wanting a greater sense of purpose each morning and satisfaction when the day is done. This desire applies to all their endeavors, whether they are personal or professional in nature. These folks usually love their work as much as their families and all the other activities they’re doing. It seems that when people say they’re struggling with "Work/Life Balance", they’re really looking for ways to ensure that their time and energy are being spent wisely, i.e. they want to feel they’re getting the right stuff done right.

The Lifehacker movement is a tribute to the notion that anything we’re doing can probably be done more effectively with a bit of simplifying and systemising. This applies to organising your photos or kids’ school papers as much as it does to managing your emails or running meetings at work. I like this approach; it resonates nicely with my belief that it’s not about Work vs. Life…cuz it’s ALL life! So we happen to get a paycheck for some of the things we do…but isn’t there tremendous value in trying to do it all in as focused and efficient a way as possible? The results are usually pretty worthwhile, e.g. more discretionary time in your hands, more harmonious relationships, quicker retrieval of the things you’re searching for, the respect of your colleagues and appreciation of your family, a bit more cash in your pocket, less stress, a sense of peace, etc. That may not be ‘Balance’ per se…but it’s nothing to sniff at, either!

I’ll be posting a lot more about this topic, but for now I want to share a thought-provoking article in which Keith H. Hammonds brilliantly stares down the concept of balance. Do take a few minutes to read it and let me know what you think. You’ll see yourself in here, one way or another: It’s called Balance is Bunk!

Filed under: Work/Life Balance | 2 Comments »

There’s a new word on my family’s lips these days: "Zoho."…as in, “Mom, are ya working on Zoho again?” or, “Sounds like Zoho was just what you needed honey…are you ready to watch our movie yet?” I’m happy to say that the addiction is not mine alone; all my biz-owning friends who I’ve shared with are emailing me straight away saying, “Ohmigosh – I have been looking for something like this forever!!” It’s happening to all of us: we’re getting Zoho-fied, one by one.

So what’s Zoho? It’s Address Booking (contact management) for your business. Well, that’s how it begins anyway…and then you discover everything else the ZohoCRM can do…and then you stumble upon all the other Zoho apps…and then you’re good and hooked. In less than a month of converting our team’s Outlook Contacts, Excel sales management system and a few Google docs bits and bobs to the ZohoCRM, I can measure the improvement in company systems in cold hard cash. In other words, we’ve just closed a bunch of new business that we had sort of forgotten was even in our pipeline!

Our team has been reviewing CRM options for a few months, and we’re pleased as punch with our choice. To save you a bit of time, here’s a look at the features we love and a few we’re hoping for:

Why we went with Zoho instead of others

• It’s web-based, i.e. accessible by our consultants and support staff scattered around Hong Kong as well as our VA in Canada.
• It’s free for 3 users. Additional users are only US$12/month.
• It’s not software. Your membership gives you all the benefits of ongoing development.
• It’s super flexible. How many custom fields does a girl need? Well, it’s a bit like shoes, isn’t it…
• It’s really hard to muck things up. You can undo just about anything…even your data imports!
• The tutorials and how-to Wikis are comprehensive and actually do what they’re meant to do (tell you how-to…)
• The support is incredible. Ask a question and get a friendly, spot-on answer from my new best friends Adam or Gopal within hours – usually within minutes. If they’re not sure what on earth you’re trying to ask (ahem), they’ll jump onto a desktop sharing session to have a look…using Zoho Meeting, of course!

My Zoho Wish List

• Click-through tracking on the Zoho mass emails (hard to beat Constant Contact for this feature)
• Mass email autoresponders and surveys (a la iContact)

I think my family is happy I have now ticked ‘Zoho set-up’ off my to-do list. Little do they know that I’m about to start playing with the marketing automation features! Maybe I won’t mention that just yet.

Filed under: Address Booking, Business Organising | 4 Comments »

In my last post on Address Booking I mentioned the versatility of an online contact manager like Plaxo. If you decide to go this route, there are a couple things to consider:

1. Are you comfortable with your data being stored by a third party? Be sure you are happy with the security set-up.
2. Will you regularly backup your data in case said third party ever goes under?

We use a number of web-based apps to manage personal and business contacts, finances, and photos. In all cases we chose to go with reputable and well established service providers (Plaxo, Zoho, QuickBooks, Kodak). In all cases we also do a monthly backup (export) of all our data, just to be sure we have our own copy on an external hard drive or DVD (or both, for the pix!).

The protection/backup notion also works nicely in reverse: if anything ever happened to the set of data at home/at the office, we’d have duplicates online. Over the top? Well, we have lived through the fall of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan and SARS in Hong Kong, so we’re a wee bit cautious about these things. It all kinda happens in an instant…!

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Many thanks to all of you who have sent kind wishes my way and prayers
upward on my behalf. The recovery from my carpal tunnel release surgery has
been frustratingly slow…but steady. Without being able to use my hands much
for the past 3 months,  I have had a lot of time to think and rearrange my
life so it beats to a slower rhythm. I had almost forgotten how to turn on the
television, but worry not – we have now gotten caught up on both seasons of Heroes
and are following American Idol faithfully!

Besides indulging in silly TV shows, we have been getting ourselves
ultra-organised at home, particularly in the area of "Address Booking," a term coined by one of our WorkFlow program
participants last month. I love this phrase, which describes
how and where to store all the contact details of our family, friends and work
relationships. Like many people, we had partial data in a few different places
and are usually too busy in December to sort everything out in time for a
Christmas letter! We decided it was time to solve this problem once and for
all.

As a household that sports both PCs and Macs, we chose to go with good ‘ol Plaxo because it is web-based and allows us to
synchronise family contact data with the Mac address book as well as Outlook on
my (annoying but unavoidable) PC. We can all access or update the information
from anywhere, anytime. We can also share our family calendar through Plaxo.
Set-up is quick and easy…and it’s free!

If your Address Booking could be better organised, why not set
aside a couple of hours to sort it out? You’ll be SO glad you did – as will
your family and friends who would love to hear from you. I sure hope ours still
remember who we are…!

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