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Show Your Workspace Some Love

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I Don’t Read Your Desk

Messy Desk


Productivity.
A desk is like a garage — it’s where you keep your tools. It helps if it’s organized, but your car will run fine when it is not. But messy writing is a sign of messy thinking. It’s proof our ideas aren’t under control. No one wants to be behind the wheel with someone who can’t keep the car on the road.

The thing is it’s a whole lot easier to do clear focused thinking when we don’t see clutter all around us looking back. If we take a few minutes to straighten where we work, our thought come through more easily. Here’s a way to make work more motivating when you return Monday morning.

Friday’s Answer to a Motivated Monday

Finish your last work task early on Friday, so that you have time to complete this list. If you’re working late this week, do all you can to take a “last half hour” anyway. On Monday morning, you’ll be glad you did.

  • Put things done away.
  • Lay out things that still need attending to. Mark what needs to be done. Make a to-do list, if that’s your way.
  • Use the things you laid out to make a plan for next week. Decide what you will tackle first and what your three most important goals will be.
  • Order the Monday tasks by putting what you can get done fastest first. Do this for two reasons. You’ll quickly have a sense of accomplishment, and you’ll be able to pass on what you finished to someone else can take that piece to the next step.

Then consider the week closed, leave the work at the office, give your brain a break, and have a weekend. What a great way to remind yourself and everyone else that you can enjoy your job — head for the weekend with an office that looks like it could be in a magazine . . .

Whether you work in a building away from home or in your bedroom, it’s boost to your Monday to walk back into a space that’s ready to work in.

Don’t you think the way that we take care of ourselves shows in our work? Show your workspace some love. You’ll feel it back guaranteed.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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The Secret to a Successful and Outstanding Blog

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How to Blog Series

Once upon a time in the real world, I started a blog. . . .

I thought it was going to be a writer’s project. I’ve been wrong before, plenty of times, but I don’t think I was ever quite so spectacularly off. I thought a blog would offer me a place to practice my writing and maybe allow me a chance to offer a thought. I thought a blog was a flat surface for communication. That’s not what I found.

I found the secret to a successful blog is more, and more touching than that.

calculator for head

Readers come for the information in a blog post. There’s no question of that. Readers read what writers write and writers write to teach, inform, entertain, mystify, motivate, and inspire. Every word we write, every idea we construct to share, moves from our minds to others on a fine silver thread of digital thought.

Still the thoughts alone would be sad and lonely without a heart to back them up.

heart box for heart

It’s the heart and the passion that fuel the words, make the magnetic. It’s the heart that plays the beat that resonates to bring readers back. Even when our hearts find themselves in distant places, we still recognize our humanity and our relatedness. When we write with our heads and hearts together, people notice.

Heads engaged, hearts beating, a blog has power.

collage for meaning of life

A truly successful and outstanding blog also has meaning. Somehow, in some way to each individual, a successful and outstanding blog makes a difference by adding something of value to being one who visits. You might call that spirit. You might call that direction or focus. I call that soul.

The soul of a blog is carried by the person who writes it and the folks who come to read it too.

That’s what I found, a successful and outstanding blog is head, heart, and soul. It’s all of what makes us human and worth paying attention to. Bring it who you are and the folks you meet will help you become more.

I know. It happened to me. It happens again every day.

Be irresistible
Thank you to everyone who has made this our successful blog.

Liz's Signature

Work with Liz on your business!!

What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Order

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“First things first. But not necessarily in that order.” –Doctor Who

One Way to CC It logo

Liz said something very kind to me the other day.

We were catching up on some post conference details when she said, “Chris, you are a Choreographer of Success. You clear roadblocks so things can get done.”

That’s me. Mr. Snow-Plow.

I clear the way and things happen.

I guess you could say I’m sorta like Doctor Who, but on a much smaller scale.
Doctor Who
I mean the good Doctor seems to chronically stumble onto some sort of doomsday end-of-humanity scenario. Then he’ll figure out exactly what needs to be done (and no more), and get it done just in the nick of time. All with a cheery attitude and a touch of drama (of course). And then he slides off into the Tardis as anonymously as possible.

One of the tricks to being a successful snow plow (a snow plow of success?) is the ability to prioritize well. And that obviously means the ability to put first things first.

Except when it doesn’t.

The thing is we try so hard to formula-ize things like success as though we can follow a recipe or program ourselves like a computer to achieve success. There is a whole industry making a ton of money selling people all kinds of formulas.

Some work better than others, no doubt.

But the truth is success isn’t so much a set of action steps as it is a montage of guiding principles that when collectively applied produce desirable results.

One trick is to know when to keep first things first. And then recognize those times when you will get better results doing something else first. Unfortunately I haven’t found the formula that will tell the difference every time.

Until I come up with one, I’ll just plow on. Like the good Doctor, I’ll keep applying what I know and making the rest up as I go.

And that’s just the Way I C it.

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.

Would You Change 3 Things You Think to Get to Your $Million Dream?

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Thinking smal-L —> B-ig Thinking

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Everyone should have a dream, something they strive for, somewhere they want to be. What’s yours? Do you really want your dream or is it a romance and a fairy tale that you talked yourself out of a long time ago?

I’ve been thinking about dreams and goals. I’ve figured out that only three roadblocks keep dreams and people apart. All 3 are things that we think and what we do because we think them.

If I tell you what they are, would you change the way you think to chase after that dream of yours? [Read more…]

Bad Boys: You’re Losing Your Memory

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What Was I Going to Say?

badboys of business logo

I’m ready to write something and as I sit at the keys, it’s gone. It was a spectacular idea. I know it was. Damn. It’s the second time this week, or is it the third? Suddenly I’m forgetting things — things that I’ve never forgotten before.

I used to be known for this memory of mine. Some folks even steered clear of it, feared it. They knew it could track details for decades and offer them back at lightning speed. Now what? A brain of mush has moved in where the razor sharp memory was. . . .

-Stop-

That’s the voice of a Bad Boy of Business. Bad Boys are negative messages, bad tape recordings, in our heads. Bad boys are ideas that we tell ourselves that undercut our success and productivity.

The bad boy here is “You’re losing you’re memory.”

What’s happening? [Read more…]