What Motivates You?

Its Small Business Week. 

What motivates you in your business and personal life to get things done? 

I think we can all agree that constant, continuous motivation is sometimes hard to maintain.  The times in my life when I get the most done are also the times in my life when I ma the most busy.  Those times when others are saying ‘How can you possibly be DOING all this’.  Well, that’s how it used to be anyway.  I used to take great pride in doing too much.  Right now, though, I am revisiting those times in my mind to see what I need to bring forward - you know capture a little bit of that over achievement and use it to my advantage. 

I feel I have been languishing a bit in the land of unemployment.  Sure, I have set seom goals and achieved them, but when I was working I used to dream of a time when I could have whole days to achieve my goals.  I’d work out two hours a day, clean the house, start a business, etc.  Instead the day flys by and I have not crossed much off the ole list.  What gives?

So I am trying not to bash myself and instead am looking at things objectively. 

• I am also taking note on how others motivate themselves. 
• I am looking at how I schedule my days to see what I can rearrange in order to stop sabotaging my best laid plans. 
• I am choosing a few key items and have found someone to be accountable to in the blogosphere.

It is a different tactic for me since I am more familiar with saying mean things to myself in order to get action.  Recently I have determined that that only works for so long AND is not that much fun.  Plus, I’d never do that to a friend and expect lasting change.  it takes a lot of energy to continue yelling at yourself to get things done!

I am working on my small business and myself and paying attention to how bring balance to both.

Welcome to Small Business Week!

For me Small Business Week is time to reflect on how to make my business better.  One way to do that is productivity.  There is always something I can do to increase my productivity.  One great habit that I have gotten lax on is the ‘Touch it Once’ rule.

Touch-It-Once is when I open the mail and take care of each item as I open it for the first time.  Catalogs go to recycling (unless I KNOW I’ll be ordering that week!).  Bills are put into the desktop bill paying organizer (just the bill - envelopes get tossed since I have most bills on auto pay with the bank).  Junk mail gets ripped up and tossed (yes a shredder is a must and on the list of things to buy).  Anything else gets put on a to-do list or ‘handled’. 

Touch-It-Once is a difficult habit to stick with.  Right now I am in the land of “touch it five or more times”.  I know that by simply going back to my tried and true habit I can cut my clutter, increase my productivity, and just feel better about life in general.

I’m using Small Business Week to get back my TIO habit.

What will Small Business Week inspire you to do?

Welcome to Small business week! 

I don’t know how these ‘holidays’ truly come about, but I think they are a great excuse to set some goals.  make them simple.  Like organize your desktop.  Not the whole desk or the whole office (although beware because once you start its hard to stop) just the top.

 Look at what is on top of your desk and make sure that everything within reach is stuff you actually use every day.  Like if it wasn’t there you’d be getting up every hour or so to go use it somewhere else.  Put the things you do not use frequently further away.  Not totally put away but not at your fingertips - you must stand or stretch to use it.

Finally, the things that you use the least frequently you can put far away (like you have to take steps to reach it) or simply put it away.

By taking simple steps to straighten my desktop and give the things I use the most ‘places of honor’ I increase my productivity. 

Yesterday I wrote about getting prepped for my baby’s transition to solid food and using Baby Cubes and the So Easy Baby Food Kit trays to do that. 

It got me to thinking about the adult’s freezer food.  I am thinking that while I make my fresh baby food that I could freeze some of that fresh stuff for the ‘big kids’.  I looked through some of my references and found an item to try.  It follows the same idea as the baby food freezing products it just allows larger quantities to be frozen.  I will be looking at the Food Cuber menu ideas, but my first thought is that some of the fresh produce that I make for baby can be frozen and used as soup stock or added to other sauces in some of my tried and true meals.  I love the idea of getting some additional fresh vegetables into my meal plans!

My second baby is about a month away from starting solid foods. 

So its time for this Mommy to get organized!

This time I’ll use my Fresh Baby trays to freeze breast milk into cubes so I won’t have to thaw (and waste) so much milk to mix cereal.  Then it’ll be off to the races with whatever fresh produce I find at the farmers market!

With the first I used the Fresh Baby So Easy Baby Food Kit to make and freeze those first momentous meals.   Making baby food was much easier than I thought and I had this HUGE sense of pride in starting my baby off with fresh produce grown at local farms in Northern Michigan. 

I would make the food and freeze it in the covered trays then once frozen I’d transfer the cubes into a freezer bag labeled with the food item and date.  If I needed to take food with us on the run I’d have to put the cubes into a little plastic container.  This worked well, but this time I’ve found a product that’ll let me skip the transfer step and is ready ‘to-go’. 

Baby Cubes are basically the same idea except they are individual cubes with their own attached lids.  I’ll still make the food and put it in cubes to freeze but now I will not have to transfer the cubes to a freezer bag.  I’m also ready to grab and go to daycare or out & about.  The only snafu will be how to label the food item and date for each cube.  Baby Cubes come with a tray so it could be as easy as labeling the tray.  I think its a small price to pay for not having to transfer and handle the food multiple times!