Bare Feet StudiosTo Do and Forget: Managing the Incomings with Todoist
Todoist Review
I’ve been using Todoist to help me manage my to do list. A key part is being able to capture things so I can forget about them until they are relevant.
I am the lucky winner of a life that involves managing or participating in many different projects, and many different styles of projects. I’ve noticed that just keeping track of the ideas and the assignments had become a stressor extraordinaire. I love and use Basecamp for a few of my “top level” projects, as I can track or organize my diverse assets, messaging, and assignments there.
But for all the other stuff — the messy stuff that is sometimes work-related, sometimes dream-related, and often just plain personal — I was as much a mess as my list was. I was using a combination of Reminders on my iPhone/Mac (love the syncing and easy access while out and about) or scraps of paper (yes, old school, yet super fast when I’m on the phone or something), and god forbid, some things were left in email limbo.
Yes, all that is a little embarrassing to admit in public.
Here’s Hope for Workaholics
I am in a writer’s group and also I also coach a mindful social business group where we each post daily progress and process notes about how well we are inching along to our daily, weekly, and session goals. The Q&A is designed to motivate and feed the brain so it wants to do more, by acknowledging accomplishments of any sort, and to raise consciousness, by exposing the critical self-talk that hinders so many, so often.
On Sunday night, I posted my updates and now I want to share them with you. This public sharing serves to anchor an “aha” in my own world – I do it to expose my inner critic and build muscle for the new ideas. Then, if you find it useful, I just love that!
First, the Artist Date:
I had an artist date today. Rode my bike to the beach, swam (in and out) several times, LAID DOWN (OMG – I almost never do that!), walked, and rode my bike the long way home. It is amazing how much that helped boost my mood and my physical energy.
Over the years, I’ve had an incredibly hard time dropping the work stuff and doing positive things to feed my mood and my energy. On the other hand, I’ve gotten really good at resting more; I endorse sleep as both a tonic for whatever ails you as well as an elixir that can reveal secrets to you. But stopping, “before things are done” is a challenge. This thought, “Just get it done now, so it isn’t hanging over you” has ruled too many days and nights for me. Being a Capricorn, and a workaholic, I can outwork almost everyone I know. That, my friends, is turning out to be more bad news than good news. My strength is also my weakness. Read More
Stop Learning and Start Doing
It’s not often you’ll hear such a barking-style suggestion from me. But I’ve decided that analysis paralysis has taken on a whole new realm in the world of using the internet to grow your small business or entrepreneurial venture. Webinars proliferate. Joint Ventures and VIP Days are hot. You’ve got to know all about lead capture pages. What is happening in your sales funnel, by the way?
So for myself, I’ve spent the past year not launching things while stuffing my brain too full as if I were at a virtual all you can eat buffet, week after week. What all these marvelous learning opportunities did for me though, was erode my confidence and feed the panic-prone monkey mind, kid mind, in me. I’ve spent money. I’ve invested time. I’ve made plans and doubted many of them. Because I let myself be victimized by the “you’ve gotta know this to get that!” syndrome. Read More
Mindful Social Media
Social Media practices have been such a fast and furious development over the past 10 years. (This blog is now 11 years old.) I was one of the active promoters, one of the pollyanna’s who saw so much hope and promise. (I still do.) But over time, the tools of social have also been something of a mainline drug into the limbic system. This has been much more incessant and compelling than the traditions of advertising. Though both worlds use those same ancient human fears to motivate us into new behaviors (aka buying other people’s shit), social technology has allowed it to be instantaneous and persistent.
Which has led to extremes of panic-driven decision-making and the setting of incredibly unrealistic standards for small businesses, independent creatives, nonprofits, and solopreneurs to achieve.
Hence, social media stress.
“I’ll never have enough time, I’ll never have enough reach, I’m not techy enough, etc.” This naturally has given birth to mindful social media. Those are not opposites – they actually play quite well together!
It was affecting me, in negative ways, in ways I didn’t like. And I’m someone who has loved doing social business and helping others do the same! Since social business is not going away, I’ve decided to bring my lifelong love of consciousness more actively to the foreground. One of my mindful restrictions is to limit myself to 15 minutes for the draft of this post. So here are a few ideas to chew on. Then, tell me how you stay connected without losing your soul. I’m collecting ideas!
Mindful Practices for Social Business
- Throttle way back on feeding the beast with all my ideas, adventures, and moods. Now, I am more selective. The result is less pressure to perform. A little scarcity of me, is, I think, a good thing for my brand.
- Stop reading Facebook in bed. It’s rarely inspiring or soothing; I can get caught up with my dear ones in about 15 minutes a day. I enjoy this most when I am fully awake and have my full-sized keyboard to play with. It’s made a real difference.
- Trust my intuition on what to post and when. I know, it sounds crazy. But I truly believe, “It’s all about the energy.” If there’s one thing I’m really good at, it’s about reading and understanding the energy.
- Don’t worry about what’s not getting done; focus on and acknowledge what is getting done. Yes, every drop of you that is given to this world, is precious and counts.
- Don’t complain. That is for me; there are plenty of others taking care of that space. I feel the urge, trust me. I just try not to give into it these days. At the end of the day, that’s not how I want to use my energy and it’s not how I want to be remembered.
Time’s up! Thanks for reading.
To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it.
— Eckhart Tolle
Aloha,
Photo credit: by Shyamanta Baruah on Unsplash.
For more on this topic, I invite you to learn about my Mindful Social Business Coaching program and to check out my personal blog, for more far out ideas on consciousness.
A Love Letter to The Amazing Andrew Sullivan
I have been reading you, Andrew, since 2004 – 4 years after you started blogging. You were more conservative back then, but always brilliant and weird. Those two qualities really drew me to you. I’ve been talking about you several places, but so much is coming up today that I am choosing a public homage – that also turns out to be a private wakeup call.
What you have done, is truly pioneer using the web your way. You turned off blog comments years ago because of the troll factor. But you actively encouraged reader feedback and each day, your posts include anonymous reader feedback. We the people could not use you as a platform to promote ourselves but we could engage with you, and therefore your readership, by adding value to the ideas and the energy. You left a salaried post and built-in exposure at more than one prominent publication, finally settling into your own home with no ads, supported by your fans.
You were openly gay before it was safe, before it was cool.
You published the first cover story on gay marriage, making the *conservative* case for it, back in 1989. Yes, fucking 1989. You are willing to show your true passion publicly, regardless of what others thought. You openly admit to changes of heart and opinion. You embrace your sexuality and do not hide it from your readers. How weird and wonderful to read 20 posts in a day that could range from NSFW shit to praising a pope – yes, one of the many puzzle pieces that “don’t fit” is the fact that you are a Catholic. I am a “recovering Catholic” – no desire for any religion these days much less one that played an important role in my own childhood pain.
I emailed you the day I learned you were quitting blogging, and told you, I get it. I wished you well. You owe me and everyone else nothing. And now a week later, the shock is wearing off and I am feeling extreme sadness for the loss of what you created. I have cried several times this week as I have visited your blog and once again experienced the beauty of contrast, the thrill of new voices, the videos you and your amazing staff find and share, the updates as things change inside a post, and most of all, your open-hearted, fiercely intelligent advocacy that is not done at the expense of anyone else – well, except maybe a little bit at the expense of Sarah Palin. But IMO, she asked for it, indeed perhaps thrives on it.
Somewhere in here I want to mention your love of dogs Andrew. Me too. It is one of those powerful and irrational connections I feel with you. Our dog died less than a year ago. Yours too. Thank you for not hiding the grieving. You moved the consciousness of understanding animals so far forward.
But there is also a virtual rubber band snapping at my wrist.
Why on earth shall I continue to let you be my proxy, for myself? Why pressure you to be the voice of diversity and weirdness and self-acceptance, when I can do a better part representing myself in that theater of absurd life as we know it today?
So today marks a turning point for me.
#WWID
What would I do, if I weren’t so afraid? If I cared less about others’ opinions of me? If I didn’t have to know, with certainty, who I am before I acted on some little flicker of interest?
“What would so and so do” is a reference to the deep emotional story in Hawaii of legendary surfer and lifeguard Eddie Aikau, who drowned at sea during a massive storm seeking help for his canoe mates. (well, and of the What would Jesus do meme too.) What Would I Do is a shifting of responsibility from living life through other people’s eyes, regardless of how beloved or inspiring they are. Because for me, what is the use of inspiration if I don’t anchor it inside my own cells, my own bones, my own actions? For me, it just leads to more depression, more withheld everything, more stifling of my true nature. (More on that later, as one of the most confusing things for me has been how much I love Hawaii and so much of its ethos and yet also find myself unable to breathe at times because of the stagnation of group mind and stuck-ness in the past.)
This is my view from My Transition in Consciousness. I own several blogs. I decided to put this post first on my business blog. That is the place where I have been most reserved, most adhering to protocol, most afraid to upset anyone even while embracing for over a decade the liberation that is social media: a form of communication that is based on personal and authentic sharing to build relationships. Somehow, you managed to be both classy and crude on the same page, on the same day – that is sheer mastery IMO.
I have been authentic, but not thoroughly so. You will not find lies or misrepresentations here, per se, but you can assume there is a decade of withheld opinions, beliefs, and desires. Even as I espoused to thine own self be true, I have hidden behind politeness and some fictitious set of best practices.
Andrew, the Beard of the Week perhaps sums up the mechanics of your brilliance for me. I am not a beard lover. I am the opposite. But because you have bared so much of yourself over the years, and I have come to love you and respect you so much, I chose to look at them with “fair witness” curiosity. You have built up SO MUCH credibility with me, that I am willing to drop any prejudice to engage in further examination. Thank you for being so visual, so self-accepting even in the midst of so many expressed doubts. That truly is the secret sauce I believe.
It’s turning into a really long post.
But for that too, I thank you Andrew. You held firm to long form writing. I have no idea how you consume so much in a day, but I am not going to worry about that. #WWID no longer supports worrying about others, even and especially the people I value as deeply as you.
So for all you have done, let me now stop depending on you to do that for me and let me do that for myself. Your quitting is actually kicking me out of your nest. This may be the thing for which I am most grateful to you!!!
So I leave you readers with the video that inspired this post today, Leaving, by the Pet Shop Boys. (Andrew posted it today.) It’s been raining hard here where I am in Palm Beach, and well, it just all fits together so poignantly well. Also because I love music, and dancing, and if I could have one more Andrew wish, it would be to party on the dance floor to 80’s music with you, Andrew, just having some fucking fun.
As a straight female reader, I am in the minority. So what, I ask myself now? Andrew Sullivan, you are amazing. And I imagine I will be very pissed if I don’t get emails from you, letting me know what you’re up and how I can continue to share this weird, wacky, wonderful world with you from time to time.
Love,
Rox