BIZ/MARKETING , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS , Uncategorized
Productivity Tools #8-10

Rounding out this Series of 10 ‘Inspired Productivity Tools’

TOOL #8-
STICKIES or POSTICA

A great freeware tool that I use regularly is the computer equivalent of those little colored Sticky Notes. You can download it for free for mac or PC and then create as many notes as you want for various little snippets of info. You can color code the notes too. With Postica you can add images into the note and email them to yourself or others.

http://www.posti.ca/

TOOL #9-
EVERNOTE– www.evernote.com

This is a really great meta tool for keeping all the little snippets of interesting content in one place so you can remember it, organize it and utilize it in the future. You can email a note to yourself or someone else. Good when you stumble across a site you really want to keep tabs on, but you kow just bookmarking it won’t do the trick (how often do we really go through all our bookmarks?) Evernote it.

EXAMPLE– Below is a screenshot clip taken in Evernote of my Evernote User Window.

evernoteclip

TOOL #10-

TA-DA LISTS– http://www.tadalist.com/

For those To Do List Junkies out there… here is an easy online to do list that helps you keep track of your List or create multiple lists. When you check something off your list, you can still see it in a lighter color, so you can track your progress.

FABULOUS BONUS  TOOL-
(this one is more about enjoyment than productivity)

PANDORA FREE INTERNET RADIO
http://pandora.com

Create a Radio Station based off of any favorite song, artist or album! It will introduce you to similar music and is a great way to get exposed to new artists. Great for people addicted to discovering new music. I play my pandora radio stations lately more than my own Itunes!

pandora

BIZ/MARKETING , CREATIVE BIZ/CAREER , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
Inspired Productivity Tools #6 & 7

Both of these tools from Google compliment one another and greatly inform any process of branding research, marketing copy creation, and SEO, among other things.

FIND YOUR KEYWORDS-

This free tool is really great for choosing what keywords you will seek to emphasize and optimize for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ for your web site.  Also deciding on article titles, Ad copy, Brand Positioning, and endless other uses. For example, with Catalyst Arts and our spotlight artist section, I have been using the wording of ‘conscious hip hop’ to explain the sort of hip hop we promote. When I type that in and click ‘get keyword ideas’ I learn that my phrase only gets 1,900 searches on average a month, whereas ‘underground hip hop’ gets 8,100 searches per month. So if I make that slight adjustment, there are over 6,000 people more who may stumble upon our site.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

CUSTOM GOOGLE ALERTS-

This tool is great for efficiently and easily Keeping Up on Areas of Strongest Interest. Also great for keeping  an Eye on your Competition. Once you have chosen the juiciest keywords or key phrases from the keywords tool, you can keep easy tabs on them via this free alert tool.

HOW IT WORKS:
You can set up a once a week email alerting you to any online action related to your key phrase (such as your name, biz name, or your topic of expertise) Just type in your search term, how comprehensive of a report you want, your email, and how often you want the report delivered. Very easy and very cool.

For example, a few of my alerts: ‘Catalyst Arts’ and  ‘creative entrepreneur’ and ‘creative career consultant’. This collection arriving in my inbox every week saves me the effort of going out and researching what sites, blogs, etc… are using similar keywords, and keeps me updated on the collective radar screen related to these phrases.

http://www.google.com/alerts

BIZ/MARKETING , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
Inspired Productivity Tools #2-5

Continuing in this series of highlighting cool free online tools that I use…

#2- ONLINE STOPWATCH

This is a great time management technique for those of us who tend to jump around a lot with activities and not buckle down and focus on just one project at a time. It is very simple and has helped me to feel (and probably be) more productive.

HOW IT WORKS:

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/
Click the above URL. I use “Count Down” but you can use Stop Watch too. Set a time on the watch that you intend to stay focused one one particular intention. Click the countdown and focus until it rings at you. I recommend doing 40-55 minute chunks and then rewarding yourself with a short break before launching into another focused time “chunk”.

#3- CHOOSE IT- DECISION MAKING SOFTWARE

Yes, that is right. There does exist such a thing as decision making software. And it is free. Have a hard decision to make? Need clarity about something? Give this a whirl and see if it helps you to get that clarity so you can move on into action.

It is a little bit of a scientific way to go about the decision process, but sometimes weighing pros and cons in our heads gets us nowhere, and sometimes pulling a tarot card doesn’t quite satisfy the rational part of us.

http://chooseit.sitesell.com/

#4- FREE ONLINE DICTIONARY & THESAURUS

Sure, this tool may be more relevant to writers than other kinds of artists, but really we all could use some help to decipher official meanings of words for various reasons. Use this tool to expand your vocabulary, or to help choose the right words for your marketing copy.

http://dictionary.reference.com/  Get the actual definition of a word can give insights very useful to deciding to use it or another. I often start my word deciding process here and then take it to the thesaurus to explore related word options

http://thesaurus.reference.com/ Great for helping you find just the right word by typing in a word that is close and seeing a cluster of its meaning relatives.

RECENT REAL LIFE EXAMPLE– I went onto the decision making site to help me decide between two variations on my new tagline for catalyst arts. The decision:
Either “branding, expanding & promoting creative works” or
“branding, expanding, & promoting creative projects”.
The decision software pointed towards works with a small lead. I then looked it up on the dictionary site and didn’t really like the connotations. I did like the project definitions better, and so started leaning towards that choice. Putting project into the thesaurus gave me a couple new options such as “enterprise” and “venture”, and I also got a peek into my word visually clustered with relatives- known as the Visual Thesaurus.
Definitely Cool enough to be…

#5- VISUAL THESAURUS

Is an ” interactive tool that allows you to discover the connections between words in a visually captivating display.” Really great for those of us who like to see things visually. (In case you are one of those people, I used tool #1 (imagespark) to grab a snapshot of this tool in action, and here it is:

visualthesaurus


http://www.visualthesaurus.com
It appears that this tool may not be free, (a disclaimer in case any technicality police visit my blog :)) but it is at least free as a trial and worth exploring.

CREATIVE BIZ/CAREER , CREATIVITY/ARTS , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
Inspired Productivity Series- favorite free tools #1

ImageSpark-
This is a really fabulous tool that you download for free that helps you to capture and collect into one place all the great inspiring images you come across in your wanderings through cyberspace. It is especially good for visual artists and designers, as you can grab images that are a “mood” you are going for with a project and use them for your own or a clients reference.

How it works:
After you sign up and download it, a little star like icon hangs out in the top right corner of your computer. You see an amazing image you love and just click the icon, easily capture the image and file it in your library for future reference. You can create “mood boards” and easily view and capture images from other users, and you can choose if you want an image to be private or public. A great part is that you give credit to the source of the image (which is good both for honoring its creator and in case you want to use it on something you can check with them and give them proper credit) Here is a clip I took using image spark of my own image spark library.

imagesparklibrary

Go to the Site and get it yourself: – http://www.imgspark.com

And another snapshot of my library

imspklibrary2

CREATIVITY/ARTS , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
ODE to the HIGHLIGHTER

highlighter-yellowHighlighters can be little magic wands of a kind. Magic because they help to select what is essential and worthwhile to you and bring it to the forefront of awareness. As I explain more below, this literal act can lead to the strengthening of a valuable perceptual tool.

When I am reading a good book, I always have a pencil and a highlighter by my side. I underline and star outstanding passages with the pencil or pen, and then I highlight and draw keys next to the “key” content. That way when I glance back over the book months or years later, I can easily get straight to the juicy parts.

If something is usable to some aspect of my work (like an exercise or diagram I want to reference in a workshop) then I will dog ear it on the bottom or more recently write the page number and a brief note about it on one of the blank pages in the back of the book. That way, I can extract and access useful content out of the book in an efficient way. I read books like a prospector looking for gold. When I am done, the treasure I found is literally highlighted in gold.

The great thing about highlighting key passages in books over many years is that it teaches you to think with a highlighter filter. Trains you in highlighter perception if you will. You automatically look and listen for the most exciting, relevant, and profound sections to jump out at you and then you give them the ability to easily jump out at everyone because of their bright color. This ability to listen for the essence of something has served me very well in working with coaching clients. My mind is naturally highlighting key parts of what a client is saying when they are sharing about something.

Who has time anymore for excess and fluff? We want to cut straight to the chase, get to the point, and get the juice of a concept without having to chew on a lot of excessive fiber.
So get yourself a literal highlighter and use it on articles, poems, instructions and books. Also practice highlighter perception and listen for and then “highlight” the essence of what a person is saying to you or the core of a situation.

INTEGRATION  EXERCISE

Write in your Journal if you have one or just do a Free Write on a piece of paper.
Go over it with your trusty highlighter and mark the parts that jump out at you as interesting.
Write a new and more streamlined expression using mainly the highlighted sections of the old.

What about You?? Any good highlighter tips?
Comments are welcome.

BIZ/MARKETING , CREATIVE BIZ/CAREER , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS , Uncategorized
TOP 3 JOB SEARCH TIPS

There are so many people seeking work right now. Whatever label you want to put on our current economic situation, one of its undeniable effects has been many out of work, leading to many seeking work.

Though I am a certified career coach, these tips are not just general intellectual ideas. They have been extracted from the lessons I learned these last few months during my own job search process. (After spending the Winter in Asia I came back to California and had to dive into manifesting a couple of day jobs to pay the bills while I keep progressing towards my big goals)

So- here they are.

1.    Intentionally target your ideal work situation and pursue them even if they have no Job Listings.

The truth is that most jobs are filled via “internal” connections within an organization before they ever get posted to the public. (internal meaning the friends, family and colleagues of those already working at the company) By the time a job gets posted on Craigslist or a job board, job site, or in the newspaper, it becomes victim to an overwhelming pile of resumes. Due to this huge load of qualified and overqualified resumes, your chances of standing out are pretty slim. So try another approach altogether. Ask yourself who you really want to work for and what you want to do. Choose what you have the most qualifications or the most passion for and get as specific as possible about your ideal job situation. Then do your research and single out a small group of target jobs and gather relevant information about the company and people in leadership. If possible, deliver your resume in person and make a friendly positive impression on anyone and everyone you meet during the process. Perhaps they have a position opening up in the near future, or are open to hearing what you have to offer. In any case, you have shown yourself to be pro-active and flattered them by choosing them specifically, so you have already set yourself well apart from the majority of the competition.

2.    If you can’t find a job, Create one.

If you get depressed looking at the list of available jobs and feel like you would not fit into any of them, then maybe you should try custom making a job to suite you. There are many ways you can go about creating a job. As is often true, the only limit is your imagination. Some Possibilities:  Volunteer for your favorite organization and offer to creatively fundraise to pay for your salary. Propose a position for yourself and then make it risk free by offering to work the position for a period of time for free to let them feel the benefits it will generate. Turn a hobby into a side job. Teach a class or workshop in something that you love/are good at. Basically, look for needs and opportunities everywhere and then get creative.

3.    Create a simple Follow-Up System.

It is very easy to attach a resume to an email and hope for the best. But it is relatively rare to be organized and persistent enough to actually follow-up. This is an easy place to set your self apart from the masses. Example of a very simple system: Create a Follow-Up List on your desk, and document the relevant info about the position you applied for and date you applied. Then schedule 2 or 3 follow-up communications in the week or two following your initial application. You want to be persistent in a friendly way and not become a nuisance. There are software applications and calendars, and phones and coaches and friends and many possible elements to utilize in customizing a system that works for you. Get creative in making your own follow-up system- and make sure to use it!

What about you? Any useful tips you have gleaned from your own experience?

CREATIVE BIZ/CAREER , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
MANIFESTATION Tips- the Key of Specificity

We are all familiar with the saying “Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.” But what about: be specific about what you ask for or you might get the wrong thing?

For example, you don’t go into a restaurant and ask for a salad and assume that it will have the toppings and dressing that you like on it. And if you ask for a salad and get a generic boring salad instead of the spinach salad with roasted beets and warm goat cheese that you later realize was what you really wanted, you can’t blame them for bringing you a generic dish when you didn’t clearly ask for what you want. Even if you ask for what you want and they can’t make it, there is bound to be a restaurant that can.

This semi obvious wisdom in the salad metaphor translates to more profound scenarios such as manifesting the right apartment, shoes, partner, or job. Although in these cases, we don’t have a waiter taking our order, instead we are engaging (consciously or unconsciously) with whatever invisible forces move behind the scenes to make things happen. Many prefer to call this force God, or a variation thereof, and though it may sound somewhat vague, overused, or new agey, I’m going to refer to this great force beyond us as ‘the Universe’.

I am not necessarily just another proponent of the “Secret” philosophy that we can command cars and careers and money from the Universe and it must comply if we do it right. There is some selfishness in this spin on Universal law that I am a bit uncomfortable with. Yet the principles of manifestation seem to be pretty consistent across the many philosophies that proclaim them. These principles involve clarifying your desire, really asking for it, and then combining faith, gratitude and action till it comes to be.

I have had so many experiential confirmations of how easeful manifestation can be that now specificity is mandatory. So when it is time to manifest a new home, I write down the key features that my new home needs to have, from closet size to feel to price and place it on my wall or altar during my search. I still do all the work to find a place, but each time I have done this, I have magically found the place that matched my list.

So let’s take this principle into the realm of jobs. Jobs and money tend to be a place that many of us experience a frustration or a lack of easeful manifestation of just the right situation. But being a career coach in a recession time, I can’t oversimplify the matter by saying that it’s only a question of ask and you shall receive. There are limitations due to the socio-economic design of our modern society, and then there are limitations due to the scope of our own thinking. Yet specificity is still key here in manifesting a good fitting job. Just like our lunch dish, we don’t go to a company and ask for “a” job, we apply for a specific job and in some cases it doesn’t exist and we have to create it. (which will need to be the topic of a future blog post)

The specificity principle is not just applicable for manifesting, it is also a key for marketing. If you put out an ad saying Nice Massage available, you will get a fraction of the response then if I say Therapeutic Massage specializing in low back injuries or neck and shoulder pain from desk jobs. That is why everyone is saying niche niche niche. In the overwhelming array of options, you won’t hit a target unless you are aimed, and your target audience will not find you unless you hone in directly on them and their aims.

We need to have clarity in order to have this level of precision, and we have to be diligently curious and honest with ourselves to get that clarity. We have to ask ourselves over and over again, “What do I really want to be or to do?” What am I really good at? What is my biggest issue and what support do I need to solve it? What do I really want or really need right now?  What can I offer that will help others and feel fulfilling?

If it is clarity you want, then ask the Universe for the specific clarity that you need, and be willing to do the work to find it. Journaling, bouncing thoughts off best friends, or hiring a coach can all help you hone in on the correct target. If you already know what you want then challenge yourself to get really specific and put it on paper and ask the Universe for exactly that. If it is meant to be, it will be. And if you ask for it specifically, so much greater are the chances that your cherished desire will indeed be realized.

Cheers to your Clear and Easeful Manifestations,

Audette Sophia

CREATIVITY/ARTS , PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS
YOUR ARTISTIC LOVES- A Creative Chronology Exercise

My first love was gymnastics/dance, then came collage, then poetry, then guitar & songwriting, etc… After these wonderful love affairs I have had with these many art forms, there remain a few that would be able to be categorized as life-long loves. One day while journaling I stumbled upon this process of making these lists and boiling them down to the more essential. I found the framing it showed me quite helpful, so I have developed it into an exercise for you to try. It goes like this:

1. LIST any & all Artistic Forms you have had an affair with in your life. (from brief infatuations to staple marriages) Note- you can do this for all sorts of loves, not just ‘artistic’.

2. Place them in the order they appeared in your life (optional, but interesting to see the chronology)

3. Split your list into 2- the ones that you are still somewhat actively engaged in, and the ones you have pretty much let go of.

4. Notice where you feel peaceful acceptance around the lost art and where you feel sadness or upset. See if you can take small steps to reclaiming any lost loves.

5. Circle the ALL TIME most IMPORTANT to you from the List. (should be less than 3)

6. Write a Love Letter or Vows & Commitments to this 1 (or 2 or 3) Outlet that you Cannot Live without.

Hope you get Insight into what Really Matters to you. Have Fun!

PRODUCTIVITY/TOOLS , Uncategorized
STREAMLINING- a positive result of economic turmoil

I have a tendency to look for the bright side of apparently bad things. The “economic crisis” is weighing heavy on a lot of us, and much of the news tends to be gloomy bad news. So I want to point out one of the best things that I see resulting from this crisis.

From businesses to family’s, people are taking stock and pulling their energy out of the excessive and extraneous, and, streamlining.

The dictionary definition I liked best for streamlining is: “to alter in order to make more efficient or simple.”

Weather this altering is pointed at our business offerings or our expenditures or our to-do lists, it is good to move towards less clutter and more simplicity. In a culture which seems to almost celebrate excess, we could really use this good excuse to cut away the fat and get down to what is essential.

So in the spirit of this, I offer these INQUIRIES to think about & Act on:

1.    What area of your life do you feel most overwhelmed by? List ways (from the small to the drastic) that you could simplify in that area.
2.    How many pots are on your front burner? If any of these projects aren’t bringing profit and fulfillment, can you put them on the back burner or take them off the stove?
3.    What in your life is weighing you down and would make you slow to respond to changes? Examples of these weights range from outdated mental baggage to a cluttered garage that needs going through, or a living situation that is comfortable but nestles you into a rut. What activity could you undertake that would lift some of that weight off you?

Some Suggested Streamlining Actions:

•    Go through your closet and take out everything you don’t love or don’t wear. Give it to charity or organize a fun clothing swap.
•    Go through your closets, drawers and garage and repeat the above exercise.
•    Go through your email inbox and delete as much of it as you can and file the rest.
•    Look over the projects that you started and haven’t completed and see which ones you can complete and which ones you can toss or give away.
•    Organize your computer files and clean up your desktop. Get rid of any technology that you aren’t using, and backup your important info on a CD and an external drive.

OVERALL– Look over everything in your life from your belongings to projects to relationships and be willing to release anything that does not bring you money, fulfillment, or joy.