5 Minute Fixes to Get to Inbox Zero

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Just this week my friend Terri told me about her life-changing experience.  

She got to Inbox Zero.

Amazing, right?

You know Terri — I’ve spoken about her before and she and I are starting a new venture together with the launch of our online course Lights Camera Expert.

Anyway — whenever I see the amount of unread emails she has I have an anxiety attack. We’re talking 4 and 5 digit numbers.

Yes, thousands of unread messages.  

Finally she had enough and decided to archive all of her messages. She didn’t go as far as I have in the past by deleting everything in her inbox. Instead she archived the ones she’s gotten in the past month and has a clean and shiny inbox.

Time spent: Less than 5 minutes. (However, she’s been agonizing over this for at least a year.)

The misconception about cleaning out your inbox is that it needs to take a long time. So we often put it off and procrastinate.  Putting it on the “oh yeah I should do that” list. Read more

Best Free Resources for Life Long Learning

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For the first 18 years of our life we are focused solely on learning. Kids these days are learning every day by going to school, and still learning when they go home and watch cool songs with a learning theme. We study, make flash cards and brainstorm new ideas. For some of us this learning goes on well into our twenties with college. But once we leave university, most of us move on from learning into the workplace and never really go back.

I loved learning when I was a kid and I always make it a point to learn something new whenever I can. As a journalist I’m naturally curious and one of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to become an expert in many different subjects even if just for a day.

Just because you’ve left school doesn’t mean you have to give up on life-long learning. In fact, many of the long-term bucket lists that I see include learning a language or new skill. But these long term goals tend to get overlooked because they can be quite costly or because people don’t think they have the time to achieve them. Read more

These Excuses Are Keeping You From Getting More Done

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Let’s be honest.  We all hold ourselves back in some way or another.

When we start to fall into a bad habit, it’s so much easier to blame something or someone else than to get to the root of the problem. When it comes to poor productivity habits, I’ve heard all the excuses.

I’ve been over a few of them before, but there are so many I thought I’d go over a few that you might be telling yourself these days and help you get past them:

“I’d be more organized if I had more money”

This excuse differs from the others in the sense that it is – technically – true. If we all had the money to afford personal assistants of course we would be more organized!

But just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you have to give up on organization altogether. There are plenty of free apps to help you plan your day. If all else fails pen and paper is pretty cheap!

Fix: Stop focusing on what you don’t have and start thinking about what you do. Read more

5 Money-Saving Apps to Try

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money-256319_640Making lists goes hand in hand with budgeting. Sometimes it’s not about how much you’re spending, but what you’re spending that money on. Lists help you keep track of that kind of detail.  Most people know how much they spend on groceries or gas a month, but how much do you spend at restaurants or on new clothes? Or how can you save a few dollars here or there to buy the stuff you really want?

Here are some of my favorite money-saving apps:

Mint.com – This website organizes all your accouts into one easy to view site. It has a savings tool, which allows you create a saving goal and lets you know if you’re on track to meet your goal. They also have a budgeting tool that tracks all your expenses and puts them into categories. It’s a free, easy to use service.

If you’re worried about security Mint has recently introduced a two-step verification process so your login is more secure. Read more

Could You be a Brave Entrepreneur too?

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When I first started ListProducer.com in April 2011 it was just a hobby. I didn’t think of myself as a business owner or an entrepreneur. I thought of myself as a writer and list maker who had a blog.

I would write blog posts when I felt like it, because planning and sticking to a schedule was something I did at my regular job and therefore it was not fun. So I didn’t have an editorial calendar at first.

Many new entrepreneurs do themselves a disservice by seeing their side business as a hobby. Once I started to treat my side gig as an actual business, that’s when I started to see results!

When I took my business seriously so did other people! I still enjoy working on it, it just that now it’s a slight more organized kind of fun!

It’s turned into so much more since Listful Thinking was published and I’ve created my online course Take Back Your Inbox and have others in the works. I’m a real entrepreneur.

This idea of turning a hobby into a business is something I discuss on the Brave Podcast where I was recently interviewed. So if you’re a new entrepreneur or thinking of starting up your own business do check it out!

I also delve into my mantra for 2016 ‘Rest is the new hustle’. With our increasingly busy lives we’re not taking any time to ourselves! On the podcast I discuss how to say no and prioritize your time (even though it feels unnatural at first).

Check it out!